Inside Pete Buttigieg's South Bend, a city trying to reinvent itself
The comparisons of the South Bend of his youth and today
The river also provided power for South Bend’s industrial rise, a climb that peaked with Studebaker. The auto company was South Bend’s pride, a shorthand for its broader manufacturing prowess that included Singer sewing machines and Bendix brakes. The city swelled with middle-class workers, who could rely on a lifetime of solid work right out of high school.
The city, which peaked at around 130,000 residents in the early 1960s, lost more than a quarter of its population; by 2010, it was around 100,000 people. Those who could afford it fled to the suburbs. He left for Harvard University, then Oxford and finally a consulting job in Chicago. In his memoir, he describes moving home for the most prosaic of reasons: to save money on rent while he spent most of his time on airplanes as a consultant. He used South Bend as a base for a failed run for Indiana state treasurer in 2010, and a successful run as mayor in this heavily Democratic city the following year.
“A lot of those seeds have been planted, even before Pete,” said Jeff Rea, president of the South Bend Regional Chamber of Commerce. “And then Pete sort of fertilized them and helped them grow.” “It’s like we put black gospel and Anglican high church and contemplative Quakerism all in a blender,” he said.“The thought that we could be located in a place that speaks of history and identity and relationship for the city was really desirable,” he said.
By the 1940s, the fountain had fallen into such disrepair that it was dismantled. It was restored and dedicated last fall in its new home — in a park across the river from Buttigieg’s house.
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