Aaron Helman
100 Years Ago, They Became 'The Four Horsemen'
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED OCTOBER 18, 2024
October 18, 1924. South Benders, Golden Domers, and West Pointers had the date circled on their calendars from the moment the contest was announced. The men of Notre Dame had gotten the best of the early rivalry, winning seven of their first ten contests against the Black Knights since the series began in 1913.
The 1884 Election and the Biggest Party South Bend Had Ever Seen
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED OCTOBER 12, 2024
It was October 18, 1884. The Republican newspapers in South Bend didn't believe in jinxes and they certainly weren't worried about what might happen if they counted their chickens before they were hatched. As the city approached the largest human gathering in its young history, they were bold with their headlines, issuing predictions as proclamations and making projections as matters of fact.
“They Built the Grotto with the Rocks from His Farm”
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED OCTOBER 9, 2024
My friend Greta told me the story as if it were an urban legend, and as I watched her speak through the wisps of the steam that blew across my untouched coffee, it might have seemed like magic. But it also might have been true. The story went that her great-great grandfather came to South Bend from Pennsylvania, purchased a plot of land from Father Corby himself, then worked on parts of the early construction of The University of Notre Dame, and that even the campus's historic Grotto was built with the rocks from her antecedent's farm.
Alexander Napier Thomas: South Bend's Forgotten Mayor
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED OCTOBER 7, 2024
Alexander Napier Thomas died on March 26, 1904, at the age of 64. Complications from a lifelong struggle with diabetes had felled him in his home. Businesses closed throughout his city to honor the man. Mourners lined up to gaze into his coffin and to look upon his face one last time. His obituary remembered him as affectionate, indulgent, charitable, noble, and excellent.
The South Bend Washing Machine Empire that Never Was
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED OCTOBER 5, 2024
Armed with a war chest full of his dad's money and a handful of patents that he'd purchased from a friend, Eliot Churchill Williams boarded the eastbound train from Chicago. He passed by Gary, Michigan City, LaPorte, eventually stepping off the platform in South Bend, Indiana. This was his new home, and it was the place where he was planning to build an empire.
Jimmy Carter's 1976 Visit to South Bend
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED OCTOBER 1, 2024
By October 1976, Jimmy Carter was used to being recognized wherever he went. It was a good quality for a Presidential candidate to have, especially one who had been relatively unknown just a month prior. But there were a handful of times when Carter would have rather eschewed the spotlight altogether, usually on Sunday mornings when the famously religious candidate sat in on a church service wherever his campaign had him that day. Carter would bristle at the way his presence would overshadow the Sacred Hour, wishing he could switch of his celebrity, just for long enough to become an anonymous presence in the reverent room.
Who Was 1922 Baseball Star Bashful Stanley?
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED SEPTEMBER 22, 2024
The tales of South Bend's industrial leagues are legendary. Every factory had a team, many of them had their own fields, and the matchups between its marquee teams drew crowds into the thousands. These same teams would play scrimmages against Notre Dame's baseball team, travel across the Midwest to settle regional rivalries, and hold their own when barnstorming tours - like the one Babe Ruth got suspended for - came to town.
The Crumbs of the Kankakee Marsh Are Under Threat
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED SEPTEMBER 16, 2024
Oak savannas like the one at the Speedway used to rule over the Midwest. Now they are among the most threatened ecosystems on the planet. Our portion of the continent used to be covered by 50 million acres of these savannas. Now there are fewer than 30,000 remaining. The land behind the Speedway represents some of the final crumbs of the Kankakee Marsh, and now there is actually a discussion about whether or not we should make those crumbs go away too, all so we can put an auto scrapyard in their place.
A Trip to Indiana's Tallest Waterfall!
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED SEPTEMBER 10, 2014
My wife grew up hiking in Arizona, endeavoring through picturesque canyons and soaring Saguaro forests, following well-marked trail maps toward inspiring cascades with names like Angel, Havasu, and Seven Falls. So when I told her that we had waterfalls in Indiana too, she was pretty excited. And because she deserves the very best, we started our adventure at the top of the list, driving three hours to Williamsport to survey the tallest waterfall in the Hoosier State.
Rudy Donmoyer: Mayor of South Bend's Kalamity Korners
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED SEPTEMBER 8, 2024
Rudolph Wellington Donmoyer was born in 1847 on a Pennsylvania farm that wouldn't be able to hold him for very long. By the age of 15, he managed to enlist to fight in the Union Army and saw just about as much action as anyone on either side. Donmoyer was involved in at least 45 battles, including the Battle of Gettysburg.
There's a History of Madness on Wayne Street
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED SEPTEMBER 1, 2024
You might know Major General Anthony Wayne as the namesake of Fort Wayne. If you're a connoisseur of craft beer, you might recognize him as the inspiration behind the Mad Anthony's label. But if you're like all of the people I met and interrogated on my walk along Wayne Street through the heart of downtown South Bend, you probably don't know him as a Founding Father of the United States of America.
The Road Is Named After a Guy Named Brick?
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED AUGUST 16, 2024
One of the great disappointments of my life came when I learned that Brick Road in South Bend was never actually paved with bricks. In retrospect, it should have been obvious. It wouldn't have made any sense for the disjointed rural route to have been paved with bricks back in the day. In fact, for a long time, the glorified dirt lane wasn't paved with anything at all.
We Lost Our Wetlands Once. Let's Not Do It Again.
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED AUGUST 14, 2024
On February 16, Gov. Eric Holcomb signed Indiana State House Bill 1383 into law, further reducing an already eroded set of protections for Indiana's already diminished wetlands. For many Hoosiers, it might not seem like a big deal. Cruise the state for long enough and you'll start to wonder just what wetlands there are to protect.
A Trip to the World's Largest Concrete Egg!
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED AUGUST 10, 2024
“You guys wanna go see the egg?” I asked as we pointed our car south on Indiana 19 from Etna Green, all part of our backroad sojourn from South Bend to Muncie. “The egg?” Of course, I needed to explain that I meant the world-famous Mentone Egg, the largest in the world, and an irresistible roadside attraction and photo spot for generations of eager tourists moving back and forth between places like Rochester and Warsaw or Bremen and Wabash or Plymouth and South Whitley.
Everybody Is Someone at the U.S. Open
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED AUGUST 6, 2024
The golf world watched in rapt attention last May at the PGA Championship as club pro Michael Block snuck through the cutline and hovered at the very top of the leaderboard, climbing as high as second place on the second day of play. They cheered uproariously when he aced the 15th on Sunday, and when he finished the tournament in 15th place, Block reported that he received hundreds or thousands of congratulatory messages, including one from Michael Jordan himself.
This Story Ends with a Naked, Famous Poet
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED AUGUST 1, 2024
This story is going to end with a naked, famous poet; but it's going to begin with a wedge of fine Italian cheese that I never even got to eat. On a Friday filled with errands and appointments, we made a spontaneous decision to pick up some provisions from Oh Mamma's on Mishawaka Avenue. We’d decided that day that cheese sounded like a good thing, but then again, cheese sounds like a good thing every day.
The Curious Tale Behind South Bend's Bridge to Nowhere
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED JULY 30, 2024
Deep in the back pocket of South Bend's City Cemetery, behind rows of well-manicured stones that bear many of the same names as the streets that make up the downtown grid, there is a bridge that doesn't need to exist. It's an adorable feature of the historic cemetery; a useless bridge that connects nothing to nowhere, that safely moves travelers from one side of a grassy field to another. The ditch that ran below that bridge has been filled for a century-and-a-half. If humans weren't a sentimental people, the bridge would have been removed a long time ago. Over the course of 150 years, dozens like it already have been.
An Environmental Dispatch from Singapore, Michigan
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED JULY 24, 2024
The trip from South Bend to Singapore might be a little different than you'd expect. It's a lot of highway, followed by a cruise through Saugatuck's coziest beach communities, a narrow road beneath a serene canopy of trees, and a short drive across a sand-swept parking lot. From there, it's not more than a handful of dune climbs and coastal hiking before you find yourself in the town of Singapore, Michigan.
The Washington Street Stop on the Underground Railroad
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED JULY 12, 2024
When Joseph Bartlett came to South Bend in 1837, he already knew his name would be remembered beyond his own life. When the city's Bartlett Street was later named after him, it wouldn't be the first road to carry the Bartlett legacy, and it wouldn't be the most important one either. That's because Joseph Bartlett was a descendant of Josiah Bartlett, signer of the Declaration of Independence and first governor of New Hampshire. According to the canon of The West Wing, that also means that South Bend's Joseph Bartlett is related to fictional President Jed Bartlet, portrayed in that television show by Martin Sheen.
The History and Mystery of Babe Ruth's South Bend Homerun
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED JULY 8, 2024
My eyes were blurry and fuzzy, courtesy of a four-hour binge session in the microfilm room, a byproduct of a bizarre obsession I'd developed for a Babe Ruth home run that never even made it into the record books. In fact, I'd just spent the final hour of that session poring through century-old issues of South Bend's Goniec Polski, a newspaper written in a language I don't read, in order to find a photograph that wasn't there.
Samuel Sample: South Bend's First Political Hero
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED JULY 3, 2024
My great-grandfather was very famously not a fan of the quality of the pavements on Sample Street in the 1970s. You can imagine his Chrysler bouncing over the pockmarked road through downtown South Bend and into the Westside, parking at the house my mom grew up, then emerging from the car to make the same joke every single time he arrived.
For Some Reason, We Named a Road After Francis Quarles
BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED JULY 1, 2024
You've probably never been to Quarles Road. In fact, you've probably never heard of it, and it's even less likely that you know the guy it's named after. Quarles Road is the kind of road that you'd never get to unless you were trying to find it and also the kind of road you'd never have a reason to find. Running for less than a mile in the farthest flung fringes of Madison Township, Quarles Road connects Cedar to Beech, but is not the best way to get to either. It's unpaved and barely wide enough for two cars to navigate without swapping paint or bogging mud. There's another stretch of the same road that runs for a quarter-mile in Lakeville, and just to make things confusing - and apparently to acknowledge it - this second stretch also carries the second name Riddle Road.