‘Good God, it’s Teddy!’: In POW camp, a Radburn connection

Two photographers of Radburn met under dire circumstances

Radburn’s own Mr. & Mrs. Smith (enhanced photo, Bergen Evening Record, 1940)

We recently posted photos of Radburn in 1935 by Carl Mydans, a LIFE magazine photographer who began his career on assignment for a New Deal agency planning new “garden suburbs.’’

We knew that later, during World War II, Mydans and his wife were trapped in the Japanese invasion of the Philippines and interned for several years.

But now we’ve learned that a 1930s Radburn resident named Theodora Smith also was interned in the same camp at the same time.

Smith’s grandson points out that “Teddy’’ Smith was herself a motion picture photographer, and probably discussed photography and Radburn with Mydans; and that Mydans, who was repatriated in 1944 in a prisoner exchange, returned to the same camp a year later with the U.S. troops who liberated it.

When he spotted his emaciated former fellow prisoner, Mydans exclaimed, “Good God, it’s Teddy!’’

Not a wallflower

Matthew and Theodora Smith and their two children (from her first marriage) were among Radburn’s first settlers – the 11th, they used to say. They moved into 7 Ashburn Place in spring 1930.

Teddy’s son David Coe was the only teenage boy in Radburn at the time, he said in a 1978 interview. When a teenage girl moved in, he said, she became his girlfriend.

Matt Smith worked for the City Housing Corporation, Radburn’s developer. But after sales dried up in the Depression, he was transferred to Long Island to work on another community being developed by CHC President Alexander Bing.

After that community – Munsey Park – was finished, the family moved back to Radburn, settling on Howard Avenue.

Teddy seems to have been, to put it mildly, an extrovert. She was pictured in The Hackensack Evening Record with her two Scottish terriers, Radburn Lady Libby and Radburn Kiltie. She was a member of the Radburn Players, and portrayed Mae West at a “Frontier Night’’ Republican fundraiser wearing a plumed hat, feathers and ruffles. She entertained the likes of Archduke Leopold Maria of Austria and Prince Mirza Mahmoud Kan Sagaphi of Iran at the house on Howard.

After Matt Smith took a job with an international freight shipping company, the couple traveled the world for much of the late 1930s. They were in Western Europe when World War II began in 1939. Teddy was briefly detained by authorities in both Belgium and the Netherlands for taking photographs. In the Netherlands she’d left her hotel without her passport or identification, and was traveling in a militarily important section of the country.

Touting ‘the ideal community’

After returning home to Radburn for a spell, the couple left for Asia in late 1940. “Adventurous Smiths of Radburn Hit the Glory Trail again’’ headlined the Paterson News. A photo of Teddy was labeled “Adventuress.’’

For the trip to Asia, the News reported, Mrs. Smith had “during the last 10 months taken motion pictures of Radburn social life and … will show the pictures to the Asiatics, explaining to them that Radburn is the ideal community.’’

On a stop in Chicago en route to the West Coast, the Smiths showed the film to two old Radburn friends – Louis Brownlow, who helped set up Radburn for the CHC, and Herbert Emmerich, the CHC staffer who came up with the basis for Radburn’s revolutionary system of cul de sacs.

The couple headed on to the Philippines, which was then a U.S. colony. Manila was to be Matt’s base and the couple’s home.

He was on business in Indonesia in December 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and overran the Philippines. Teddy was interned; Matt fled to Australia and eventually made it back to the U.S.

Teddy was held in the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila, along with about 3,000 other civilians, mostly Americans. Living conditions declined drastically as the war continued.

The Smiths’ friends back in Radburn waited anxiously for news. According to one newspaper article, Teddy had lost 106 pounds (her grandson says she had weighed between 160 and 200 pounds) and suffered from beriberi and colitis. But she reportedly was “one of the most energetic and consistent workers in the camp,’’ lecturing on her travels, running the hospital library, and making presents for children living in the camp.

The July 30, 1943 edition of the Paterson News reported that, based on reports overheard by amateur shortwave radio operators, “Mrs. Smith may soon be released.’’ In fact, she would remain at Santo Tomas until American troops retook the Philippines in 1945.

Mydans was luckier. He and his wife were transferred to Shanghai and then repatriated in 1944 in a prisoner exchange. He was a photographer with U.S. forces invading the Philippines in 1945, and was with the unit that liberated the camp where he’d been held.

Teddy saw him walking through the camp, and yelled to him. When he saw his old friend, Mydans exclaimed, “Good God, it’s Teddy!”

This episode is recounted by Teddy in an unpublished memoir in the possession of her grandson, David Coe Jr., who grew up on Ballard Place in the ‘50s and now lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He read about Mydans’ connection to Radburn in our story on this site when it was forwarded to a friend by Marsha Thaler of Fair Lawn.

After the war the Smiths lived at various times in Washington, Chicago and, surprisingly, Tokyo. They eventually moved back to New Jersey to be near their children. Matt died in 1977 at 79. Teddy died five years later. Despite all her wartime hardships, she lived to 92.

The last time she shows up in Radburn in newspaper archives is 1946, when she showed an audience in the school auditorium footage of her travels and of ‘30s Radburn. Much like the "Town for the Motor Age" itself, she had weathered the Depression and the war with a spirit of resilience and optimism.