The year 1884 proved one of crucial decision for the young YMCA. In January, General Secretary Palmer resigned, and in March, President Studebaker stepped down. S.F. Allen was elected to the board presidency and Rev. J.C. Stephens was named general secretary. Reverend Stephans, however, served only through the following fall when the position went to George S. Fisher, of Anderson, Indiana. Fisher, history shows, was a genuine “hustler”, “a bright, active, energetic young man of executive ability.” It was under his leadership that the South Bend association in 1885 raised $5,000 in cash with which to purchase its first permanent home. Secretary Fisher was to serve until 1886 when he moved on to become Kansas State YMCA Secretary. Meanwhile, he spearheaded the drive, which raised the down payment on the former Bristol Hotel building at 122-24 South Main Street, into which the association moved December 16, 1885. Notes secured the balance of the $11,000 purchase price. The old Bristol Hotel was to be the home of the South Bend YMCA for 20 years. It formerly had been an “unregistered hotel” and Judge Timothy Edward Howard later recalled that, “previous to its occupancy by the YMCA there were no traditions or prior history connected with it that the association desired to perpetuate.” The old Bristol was always familiar to YMCA members as “the old joint.” The association weathered financial difficulties throughout the next 15 years or so and a number of officer changes. In 1932, O.H. Palmer was to observe that, “after Mr. Fisher’s resignation… he was followed by others who must have builder better than they knew, for they brought the work into such prominence as to give it favor with Clement Studebaker, his brothers and the entire Studebaker company so that they gladly erected the present building for a permanent home.

Sunday, October 25, 1908, dawned with a bite in the air and a heavy steel gray sky of the typical late fall variety that seems bent on spitting snow at any time, but never does. This was a big day in South bend, a day six years in the making. More than 10,000 townspeople, muffled and mittened against the chilly air, gathered early that afternoon to help the city dedicate its new YMCA. The Vice-President of the United States, Charles W. Fairbanks, was in town for the occasion. Everyone gazed at the monument to the five brothers who had put South Bend on the road maps that were just coming into being. And as the crowd gathered before a platform erected in the center of the Main and Wayne Streets intersection, carriages and horseless carriages, looking not too dissimilar, vied for parking spaces along the half-frozen, rutted downtown streets. The Five brothers who had made this dedication possible also had played a leading role in putting the nation on wheels that needed no horse to turn them. Indeed, the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company of South Bend was about to embark upon its first big year of automobile production. It would sell $9.5 millions worth of automobiles in 1909.

Thus, the YMCA was born. It would endure many problems, changes, additions and alterations in the coming years, however, it was to become the launching pad where a table tennis seed would land, sprout and eventually grow into a Junior Table Tennis Championship garden…… Stay Tuned….