This is not a specific query: I'm just looking for connections. Do any of you old-timers remember the Ellsworth's Department Store, on Michigan Avenue, which was in business from the 1890s until about 1950? My grandfather, Robert Robertson, a Scottish immigrant, was the managing partner of that store from about 1910 until it sold to Wyman's in the early 1950s. Some years later, Wyman's blew up in a gas explosion. At its height during the 1920s, there were 75 employees, and my grandfather and the Ellsworths were well-known, successful figures in South Bend and Mishawaka. I was told that for its time, the store was very snazzy and sophisticated, often compared to Marshall Fields in Chicago. However, others have told me that after WW2, its old-fashioned, customer service image diminished during the great postwar, self-serve consumer age. My father was ready to take over the reins of management, when a dispute between the Robertsons and the Ellsworths forced the sale of the store. My family moved away to Pennsylvania in the mid-1950s, when I was six years old, when prospects were getting bleak for industrial South Bend, and now my Hoosier memories of South Bend and Mishawaka are faint, but still very nostalgic. Yet my parents never stopped talking about South Bend, and of all the old friends they had there, and Christmas cards flowed on and on, for more than thirty years. I can think of at least a dozen of these families: WYCAMP, BUTTARS, HOFFMAN, O'NEILL (descendants of the once-Governor), HAYNES, LIMENGROVER (sp.), GRANT, PONTIUS and others. My father, Hugh Robertson, attended Bettell Elementary school (I have a classroom photo of him and his classmates, circa 1920), and was quarterback for South Bend High in 1928. Knute Rockne was a family friend, and personally designed a helmut for him , to allow him to play football wearing glasses. He attended Northwestern, but he also did a summer at Notre Dame. One of my father's earliest South Bend memories was banging kitchen pots and pans, out in the street on Mishawaka Avenue, at the announcement of the Armistice in November 1918. My mother, Naomi Irvin, who grew up on St. Peters Street, came from an old farming family, the Irvins of North Liberty. This was a Scots-Irish family from Pennsylvania by way of Ohio, which had some ties to the Amish and the Brethren sects, but my mother's mother was a Irish Catholic. We have almost no family in St. Joseph County now, except one of my mother's cousins' grandsons, who contacted me (because of my genealogy posts) recently. His grandfather was Richard Irvin, a decorated veteran of D-Day, who died in South Bend in 1985. (My mother said that five of her South Bend high school beaus died in one week in June, 1944). I have a lot of material concerning the Ellsworth store, including photos of an annual downtown parade they once sponsored during the First World War and after, plus photos of company parties in the 1920s, and a lot of interesting documents. I am planning to donate them to the local historical society someday. But meanwhile, does anyone remember the Ellsworth store, or the 1920s downtown cinema my grandfather was a partner in, The Temple Theater? My brother, who lives in Hawaii, visited South Bend the summer before last. It was the first time either of us had been there in nearly forty years. After visiting all the old haunts of my parents and our childhood, and former homes where we and my grandparents lived, he pronounced it one of the friendliest, most liveable places in America, with an architectural tradition and a way of life to be envied. As a newer contributor to this board, I say thanks for listening! Anyone with an anecdote or a family connection to what I've posted, please reply to my private e-mail address. My mailbox is always open! ---Bob Robertson Napa Valley, California