Doug Pendleton Died on His Birthday Saving His Wife

Douglas Pendleton, 77, died on his birthday when a falling tree limb crushed him on a South Bend sidewalk as he pushed his wife clear. Police were called about 8 p.m. on July 11, 2025, to the 600 block of West Washington Street, in front of historic Tippecanoe Place.

South Bend Police later named him as an Indianapolis man. In Zionsville he was the owner of Grapevine Cottage, the shop people called on when they wanted the Wine Guy. Linda Pendleton, 66, was taken to a hospital. The St. Joseph County Coroner’s Office ruled the death an accident and closed its case on July 14.

He Pushed Her Clear on Washington Street

They had been leaving a restaurant when the tree came toward them. Linda said her husband saw it in time to shout, and a witness said he put his body between her and the wood. He was pronounced dead at the scene. She lived.

Doug, obviously out of the corner of his eyes, saw the tree coming over and told me to run, according to a witness, pushed me out of the way.

Linda Pendleton, his wife

She spent 5 days in the hospital. In the interview she gave after she got out, she listed what the limb had done to her and still called herself lucky.

THE INJURIES LINDA DESCRIBED

• Neck: A broken neck and a total of five cervical fractures, some of them fused.
• Chest: A cracked sternum.
• Body: Bruises up and down, the rest of what a falling limb leaves when it does not kill you.

Police said she was expected to recover. The coroner’s file did not say why that particular tree failed, and no later public report filled the gap.

The Wine Guy Who Wrote the Newsletter

He was born July 11, 1948, and died on the same date 77 years later. Linda, writing the family obituary, said they had been married 31 years. He is survived by her, by daughter Sarah and her husband Patrick, by son Brad and his wife Jessica, and by grandchildren Aiden and Lily.

He learned retail young, running paper routes at 13 and working a men’s shop at 16. After Bishop Chatard and a year at Ball State, he graduated from Butler University in 1971. He printed T-shirts, including an early Star Wars design, then spent 1979 through 1999 building Great Western Boot Company with his friend Gary Modory, seven stores in five states, before he shut that chain down.

In 2000 he opened the wine shop on Main Street he had wanted to browse in himself, a small yellow house at 61 South Main in Zionsville. He stocked wines that already had strong scores, wrote a weekly letter with a recipe and a few bottles to try, and put his home number on the idea that a shop should explain what it sold. The store still lists at least 1,200 wines rated Very Good or better. Linda worked the venture with him from the first day, even while her own job was real estate for a hospital network.

Zionsville Mayor John Stehr, in a town statement on July 15, 2025, said Pendleton “ran one of Zionsville’s most successful and prominent businesses for over 25 years” and that visitors “were always met with a smile and great advice.” Linda said one of the things they had always done together was write wine reviews.

He also loved cars and bikes. Friends from cycling introduced him to Linda. He hung around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, went to car shows, and in 2010 bought a 2002 Aston Martin DB7 Vantage. That is the man who booked a South Bend weekend around someone else’s classic metal.

They Had Tickets for Saturday’s Concours

Linda said the trip was for his 77th birthday: the Studebaker National Museum on Friday, then “an actual car show on Saturday.” That Saturday show was the seventh annual Concours d’Elegance at Copshaholm, hosted by the museum on the Oliver mansion grounds, with nearly 100 classic cars, gates from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and kids 16 and under free. Patrick Slebonick, the museum’s executive director, spent Friday afternoon talking up the field, including cars from around the United States and India and a refurbished Muppet Movie Studebaker.

THE BIRTHDAY WEEKEND

1. July 11, 2025, daytime: The couple tours the Studebaker National Museum.
2. July 11, about 8 p.m.: A large limb comes down on West Washington Street, in front of Tippecanoe Place. He is killed. She is hurt.
3. July 12, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.: The Concours opens at Copshaholm without them.

Copshaholm and Tippecanoe Place sit in the same historic west-side district, the mansion row South Bend still uses as a postcard. They had come to look at old cars on those lawns. They were on foot, leaving dinner, when the tree came down.

What the Weather Was at 8 p.m.

The National Weather Service office in northern Indiana issued its South Bend climate summary at 9:10 p.m. on July 11, with numbers valid as of 8 p.m., the same hour police were called. The day had already logged thunderstorms, heavy rain, rain, light rain, and fog. Nothing in that product, or in the coroner’s closing, names the defect inside this tree.

THE SOUTH BEND CLIMATE SUMMARY FOR JULY 11

Three days later, James Clark, an owner of Michiana Tree Service in Niles, said his crews were “unusually busier than it’s been for us in a long time,” with storms knocking down trees and large limbs onto houses, garages, fences, sheds, and cars. He said the storms had “damaged and weakened a lot of trees,” and he said that mix gets dangerous in older, wooded neighborhoods. He was describing the same Friday that killed Pendleton, and a summer in which Wooded Estates, south of Notre Dame, had already been dropping wood on lawns.

Purdue Extension’s urban forestry guidance tells property owners and managers to inspect trees after major storms and, in places people actually use, to look them over every year for dead wood, weak unions, decay, and root problems. No public file says whether this West Washington tree had that kind of look, or who was supposed to give it one.

Six Firefighters, Then Five Days in a Hospital

South Bend Fire units Engine 2, Medic 2, and M1662 were first on the block. The man was already beyond help. The woman was not. On August 20, 2025, the Board of Public Safety honored six firefighters for the work they did in those first minutes. The department said doctors later credited her survival to that care, and that she was expected to make a full recovery.

THE CREW THE BOARD HONORED

• Captain: Jon Kirsits.
• Firefighters: Samuel Moon, Cesar Salinas, Justin Mika, Chad Stanley, and Francesco Lizzi.

A Celebration of Life was held on August 6, 2025, at Black Iris Estate, 5801 E. 116th Street in Carmel, with a short service at 5:30 p.m. and wine and hors d’oeuvres, the form of goodbye that fit the shop. The family asked for gifts to WFYI and to the Westminster Foundation, the retirement-community fund on whose board Linda sits, instead of flowers.

South Bend Wants a 40 Percent Canopy

The city did not treat the death as a referendum on its trees. It also did not stop asking people to grow more of them. On its public canopy page, still being updated into 2026, South Bend says it wants to raise cover from about 22 percent of land area to 40 percent, a jump it says will take planting about one tree for every resident.

SOUTH BEND’S CANOPY GOAL

• Current cover: About 22 percent of the city’s land, measured from above.
• Target: 40 percent.
• Planting: The city says that means it must plant about 100,000 more trees.
• Ambassadors: A 2026 neighborhood program pays a $300 stipend for a fall giveaway, training, and a resident survey.

Venues Parks and Arts still offers free street trees on the public tree lawn, the strip between curb and sidewalk, after an urban forester checks utilities and space. The 2026 stock was already spoken for by the time that page was updated, with a wait list into 2027. The program plants. It is not a record of which older trees on West Washington had been climbed, cored, or cut.

Pendleton’s death was a closed accident by the following Monday, a named man with a shop, a wife in a neck brace, and a car show that went on without him. The city’s tree math kept running on a different track: more canopy, more giveaways, more ambassadors. Those two facts sat on the same map and never had to answer each other.

On Saturday, July 12, the Concours opened on the Copshaholm lawn with nearly 100 classic cars. The couple had planned to be there for his birthday. He was not.