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1923 – today
The campus post first: The first VFW presence this record can document in South Bend is not a post home but a committee room at Notre Dame. In January 1923, the University of Notre Dame Archives record, a special committee of Notre Dame's own VFW post approved Vincent Fagan's design for the university's World War I memorial — the "God, Country, Notre Dame" door of the Basilica, carried in full below. A veterans post seated at the university, choosing the form of the university's memorial within five years of the armistice, is the VFW's founding generation at work in this county; the post's number is not in the reachable record, and is printed as a gap.
Post 9820, the South Bend Post: The city's standing VFW post today is Post No. 9820, styled on the Department of Indiana's roster simply "South Bend Post," at 4829 Linden Avenue, South Bend 46619 — on the city's northwest side, in the streets west of the old parade ground of City Cemetery's Linden gate. The department roster carries it in the Third District, meeting the third Sunday of the month, with its own telephone exchange taken from its number, 574-237-9820. Its present civic work is the honor guard's: in May 2026 the post's guard stood with American Legion Post 284 and the South Bend Police Department at the Memorial Day ceremony at St. Joseph Cemetery, the solemn close of the West Side parade's morning. The post's charter year is not in the reachable record; its number, in the 9800s, is of the post-Second World War chartering generations, but the record gives no date and none is printed.
Golden Hill Post 8748, closed: The federal tax record of the VFW's Indiana group exemption carries a second South Bend post: Post No. 8748, the Golden Hill Post, at 718 Johnson Street, South Bend 46628, in the near-southwest neighborhood below the Studebaker works. The post files in those records into the 2010s. It does not appear on the Department of Indiana's current post roster — where the district's chairs are held by Posts 88 of Elkhart, 360 of Mishawaka, 985 of Goshen, 1954 of North Liberty and 9820 of South Bend — and its charter must therefore be taken as surrendered: a post of the later twentieth century, named for its hill, whose hall on Johnson Street outlasted its charter in the directories. Its founding year and the date of its closing are not in the reachable record.
Across the line: Mishawaka's own post, No. 360, the Mishawaka Post, stands at 1307 East Jefferson Boulevard in that city, where it hosts the region's veterans gatherings in its own right — the concert of the Michiana Concert Band at its hall on Veterans Day 2026 among them, in the Tribune's listings. It is printed here once, as the boundary requires: the two cities' VFW lines have always been separate, and Mishawaka's post belongs to Mishawaka's build.
Sources:
- Department of Indiana, Veterans of Foreign Wars, post roster (vfwin.org), read November 2026 — Post 9820 "South Bend Post," 4829 Linden Ave., Third District, third-Sunday meetings; the district's other standing posts; Post 360 at 1307 E. Jefferson Blvd., Mishawaka; and the absence of Post 8748 from the roster.
- Internal Revenue Service group-exemption records for the VFW Department of Indiana, via NonProfitFacts — Post 8748 Golden Hill Post, 718 Johnson St., South Bend, in the filings of the 2010s; VFW Post #9820 Inc., 4829 Linden Ave.
- University of Notre Dame Archives, World War I Memorial Door — the Notre Dame VFW post's committee approval of the Fagan design, January 1923.
- South Bend Tribune Memorial Day and Veterans Day listings (2026) — Post 9820's honor guard at St. Joseph Cemetery; the Michiana Concert Band at Mishawaka Post 360.