Beyond the Capsizing: Following Four Eastland Survivors

The Eastland disaster struck Chicago in 1915, but the real tragedy unfolded in silence as the stories of its people faded, uncited and forgotten. I am gathering the scattered threads from 1935 newspaper interviews and tracing the digital footprints of four survivors. While today’s online summaries barely scratch the surface, a wealth of details lies hidden: firsthand quotes, obituaries, work records, and the subtle hints that let genealogy work its quiet magic, transforming names into living stories.

We begin with Rose Smoller, whose journey after the Eastland emerges in decades of dedication at Western Electric and her leadership with the Telephone Pioneers of America. Next comes Ethel Stephenson, who recalls the disaster through the sharp lens of childhood, and whose later role as a business methods investigator at Western Electric reveals unexpected glimpses into the dawn of scientific management and the origins of modern systems work. These details breathe life into the past, reminding us that context is what keeps history from dissolving into a mere list of names.

Frank Terdina’s story pulls us into the moment of survival, then propels us through a lifetime devoted to safety and civic duty, his obituary curiously silent about the Eastland. Jennie Turbov’s path, tangled with mismatched immigration records, shifting names, and a puzzling marriage timeline, proves that research thrives even when certainty slips away. The lesson is clear: Question Everything!

If you feel drawn to Chicago history, the Eastland disaster, Western Electric, or the detective work of genealogy and archives, let this be your reminder: the records are still waiting, ready to be brought back into the light.

Subscribe or follow. What’s the last family story you discovered that the official record almost missed?

Resources:

• “The Eastland Disaster—20 Years Ago Next Wednesday: Survivors Recall the Deeds of Heroism,” by Joseph J. Dugan, Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois), July 21, 1935, p. 3.
• “Recount Harrowing Scenes: Twenty Years Ago Today-Horror of Eastland Disaster,” Berwyn Life (Berwyn, Illinois), July 24, 1935, p. 1

Additional Music:
License: Title Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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Transcript

Welcome And Where To Start

Natalie Zett 0:07

Hello, I'm Natalie Zett, and welcome to Flower in the River. This podcast, inspired by my book of the same name, explores the 1915 Eastland disaster in Chicago and its enduring impact, particularly on my family's history. We'll explore the intertwining narratives of others impacted by this tragedy as well. And we'll dive into writing and genealogy and uncover the surprising supernatural elements that surface in family history research. Come along with me on this journey of discovery. Hey, this is Natalie, and welcome to episode 163 of Flower in the River Podcast. And as always, I hope you're doing well. And I also really hope that you caught last week's episode, because this one picks up right where that one left off. If you haven't, hit pause, go listen, and come back. It's a pretty short episode. I promise to wait for you. No, really, it will make a lot more sense. And that episode is called Eight Eastland Survivors on the Record and Ot the Radar. It's episode 162, and I published it on April 15th, Tax Day in the United States, 2026. In this episode, we are going to look at the lives of each of those Eastland survivors who were interviewed back in 1935. So in July 1935, there were two articles that interviewed nearly the same group of survivors. One article appeared in the Chicago Sunday Tribune, and the other appeared in the Berwin Life. And this is the first time I located articles where a group of survivors were interviewed at the same time. And these two articles had never been shared since 1935 and were at risk of being lost, which is a typical pattern of the history of the people of the Eastland disaster. I will share four biographies this week and four bios in the coming weeks. There's so much information, and I don't want to shortchange any of these fascinating people. As I say on my website, these people have waited long enough. So let's get to it. Rose Smoller was a Western electric employee and vice president of the Hawthorne chapter Telephone Pioneers of America. Her quote is from the Chicago Sunday Tribune. The date is July 21, 1935. It seemed only a moment later that we heard the most piercing screams I have ever heard in my life. I couldn't believe my eyes. And I guess my mind just went numb as the big boat rolled over into the river. And now here is Rose Smoller's obituary from The Berwin Life, Wednesday, july seventh, nineteen seventy six. Headline Rose Smoller dies. Hold services for Western Electric Pioneer Club First Lady. Rose Smoller, eighty two, the grand dom of Western Electric Company's Telephone Pioneers of America Life Member Club, died Friday at McNeil Memorial Hospital after a short illness. Miss Smoller of five one zero seven West 21st Street, well known in the area for her leadership of the more than 7,000 life members and her civic and charitable activities, was buried yesterday at St. Joseph Cemetery after funeral services at the Me and Rami Chapel, Chicago, and Mass at St. Viatter's Church, Chicago. Survivors are her three sisters, Hilda Schoch, Hattie Nanay, and Teresa Neumeyer. Miss Smoller retired from Western Electric on June 1, 1959, putting in 49 years of service there, having begun her Hawthorne career in 1910. She was a charter member of the Hawthorne chapter, Telephone Pioneers of America, which was organized on June 13, 1935. She became a nationally known pioneer when she became a Region Vice President from 1952 to 1953, where she held responsibility for seven pioneer chapters covering some 25,000 persons. When she retired from Western Electric, she was a supervisor. She was nominated and received a certificate of recognition from Mayor Daly's Chicago Senior Citizens Hall of Fame on April 10, 1975. She was director of community services and hobbies for Life Member Club, which is composed of Western Electric retirees having 20 years or more service prior to retirement. She directed the year-round weekly creative efforts between 100 to 125 volunteer workers, contributing some 30,000 items a year to various charities, such as old people's homes, hospitals, children's homes, Red Cross. She devoted about 32 hours a week to this activity. She was the first woman first aid instructor at Western Electrics Hawthorne Works and charter member of the Women's First Aid Corps there, founded in 1943. She was vice president of Pioneer Women's Activities from 1949 to 1950 and annual representative of Region 5 at National Pioneer General Assemblies held in the United States and Canada. In 1960 to 61, she was made a standing member of the Executive Committee and Development Committee and Senior Life Member Advisor, a position she held up until her death. Quote, this marvelous woman continued to give of time and leadership unselfishly to benefit others up until the end, said Herbert Hummelberg, Secretary Treasurer and Administrator of the Western Electric Hawthorne chapter Telephone Pioneers of America. End of article. She was a child when she accompanied her dad, who worked for Western Electric. And this is Ethel's account of her experience on the Eastland from the Chicago Tribune, July 21st, 1935. I was only a little girl at the time of the Eastland disaster, but I remember it vividly. I was on the Eastland with my father. We were sitting on the riverside outside of the cabin deck. My father's chair was right in front of a cabin window. When the boat went over, I grabbed his shoulders and we both went up through that cabin window in the water. We came to the surface inside of a big cabin, and my father realized the object clinging to his back was me. He made his way to a rail or something that he could hang on to, and after a while, we were pulled out. Here is her obituary from the Baxter Bulletin, and that's out of Baxter County, Arkansas. Thursday, September 18th, 1980. Ethel Stevenson, two-year resident, died a Saturday at Baxter General Hospital. She was a resident of Mountain Home since 1978 and was a former resident of Clarence, New York. She was born October 19, 1899 in Chicago, Illinois, and was the daughter of William F. and Mary Ella Walker Stevenson. Mrs. Stevenson was a retired business methods investigator for Western Electric. She was a member of the First United Methodist Church in Mountain Home, and she was also a life member of Twin Lakes Telephone Pioneers, Ben Hur Chapter Order of Eastern Star in Chicago, Acacia Girls of Chicago, Clarence, New York, Garden Club, Ichabana International in Buffalo, New York, and Lena Smith Circle of First United Methodist Church. Mrs. Stevenson was preceded in death by her parents and one brother. Graveside services and burial were held Tuesday at Mount Emblem Cemetery, Elmhurst, Illinois, with Reverend James Starr officiating. Memorial service will be held Sunday, september twenty second at First United Methodist Church at 3 PM with Dewey Dark officiating. Local arrangements were made by Kirby Blevins, Lefaver's funeral directors. I'm not sure why they referred to her as Mrs. Stevenson, because I've not been able to locate a marriage record for her. Furthermore, her birth name was Stevenson, so unless she also married someone with that last name, I think this was just a courtesy thing that they did during the time. What's remarkable about Ethel Stevenson was her job. I'm not sure how many women were business methods investigators at Western Electric in the mid-20th century, but she was one of them. It was essentially an internal process analyst. And this seems to be a role that grew directly out of the scientific management movement, and not coincidentally, out of Western Electric's own celebrated Hawthorne studies of the 1920s and 1930s. The title belonged to a family of positions variously called methods analyst, systems and procedures analyst, methods engineer, or office methods investigators. And this work sat at the intersection of industrial engineering, accounting, and what we might now call operations research. Practically speaking, a methods investigator would be assigned to study how a particular piece of work got done. For example, how purchase orders flowed through a plant office, how payroll was calculated, how a stock room was replenished, or how a switchboard assembly line was staffed, and then recommend changes to make it cheaper, faster, or less error prone. The toolkit included time and motion observation, flow charting, and Western Electric was actually a pioneer in standardized process charting, forms design, clerical cost analysis, and documentation of standard operating procedures. After World War II, as Western Electric swelled into one of the largest industrial employers in America and began absorbing early tabulating machines and then computers, methods people were also the ones who evaluated whether a process should be mechanized, punch card automated, or eventually moved onto a mainframe computer. They were effectively the bridge between the office floor and the systems department. At Western Electric specifically, the role carried unusual prestige because the company treated methods work as a discipline. The Hawthorne Works and the Bell system as a whole produced volumes of internal methods manuals. And the Bell Lab's influenced culture of measurement ran deep. A business methods investigator, as opposed to a manufacturing methods engineer working on the shop floor, would typically be focused on the clerical, administrative, and financial side of the business rather than the production itself. Think of Ethel tracking how an order moved from a bell operating company's requisition through Western Electric's accounting and purchasing departments to shipment and billing and flagging every redundant form or unnecessary signature along the way. Given Ethel's dates, her career likely spanned the era when this work evolved from stopwatch and clipboard time studies, which was 1920s to 1940s approximately, into early systems analysis and data processing evaluations, 1950s to 1960s. She relocated from Chicago to Clarence, New York, and it's important to note that she was living with her brother-in-law and sister. Her brother-in-law also worked for Western Electric. So that might have been some promotion for both of them. I'm not sure if her sister worked for Western Electric. But here's the backstory on Clarence, New York. Western Electric operated a very large plant at Tanawanda and North Tanawanda, just outside of Buffalo, and later the Kenmore and Cheektawaga facilities. A Chicago-born employee relocating to that area would have fit the company's internal transfer patterns. Her membership in the Telephone Pioneers, a fraternal organization requiring long service, typically 18 to 21 years in the Bell systems, confirmed that she was a career employee. Something that I have observed in my three years of doing this deeper research on the people of the Eastland is that many of them who survived the Eastland disaster stayed with Western Electric and they built a life inside of Western Electric that was not that unusual. And I hope you remember Frank Terdina's story from last week. At the time of the Eastland disaster, he was a foreman of the woodworking department and a supervisor at Western Electric. And Frank was, of course, reluctant to jump when the Eastland started capsizing because he had on a new suit. When the ship began to capsize, this is what Frank Tardina had to say. I realized that I had better get going, so I forgot all about the new suit and jumped in. The boat came down after me, and while underwater I was tangled up with some of the ropes around the mast. I struggled around for a moment and finally came clear. I caught on to some debris and was picked up by the tug steward. One of the most vivid impressions I have of the whole affair was when I was underwater. I recalled saying to myself, Frank, you're in a hell of a mess. How are you going to get out? Well, I'm not sure if the new suit survived, but Frank Terdina certainly did. Here's an article about Frank from a few years before, but it gives you an idea as to who he was and the type of leadership that he provided. This is from the Rockford Republic, Rockford, Illinois, Wednesday, March 27, 1929. Headline. The woodworking division of the Rockford Industrial Safety Council will be host to Frank Terdina, foreman of the woodworking department of the Western Electric Company, Chicago, next Monday evening at the monthly dinner at Nelson Hotel. Mr. Terdina is also chairman of the police commission at Berwin and an alderman. He will speak on hazards in woodworking shops and will remain in Rockford Tuesday morning, where he will visit several of the largest of the furniture plants in the city. He was one of the principal speakers last week at the annual convention of the Midwest Safety Conference at Chicago. At the Western Electric Company he has over 500 men under his supervision. Frank Terdina died september fifteenth, nineteen seventy. Here's his obituary from the Chicago Tribune, Thursday, september seventeenth, nineteen seventy. Frank Terdina Private services were held yesterday for Frank Tredina eighty six of OS seven six one Old York Road, Elmhurst. A former municipal and park official in Berwyn, Mr. Terdina died Tuesday at Presbyterian St. Luke's Hospital. He was a supervisor for Western Electric Company before his retirement in 1941. During the 1920s and 1930s, Mr. Terdina served as a member of the Berwin Police Commission, as president of the Berwin Playground and Recreation Board, and as Alderman from Berwin's second ward. After his retirement, he moved to Elmhurst, where he operated the open door mobile home park and was one of the founders of the Yorkfield Civic Association. Surviving are his widow, Mary, five daughters, Mrs. Mary Ross, Annette, Mrs. Lillian Parrish, Mrs. Dorothy Haley, and Mrs. Alice Schlender, five grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren. And this brings us to our final subject for today. We have four more to go, by the way, but our final subject is Jenny Turboff. And here is Jenny's quote. This is from the Chicago Sunday Tribune. Three other girls and myself went aboard the Eastland together. We found seats on the riverside of an outside deck. When the boat first started to tip, the only thing I noticed was that a man sitting behind us seemed to be pushing his chair against the back of mine. I was annoyed, not realizing he couldn't help it. Then, without any warning, we were all thrown against the rail and knew that the boat was going over. Without thinking, I stood up and jumped into the water. I remember one of the girls screamed at me, Jenny, don't jump. I guess I lost consciousness as soon as I was in the water. That's the end of the quote. I wasn't able to track down an obituary for Jenny, but what I did find still paints a very vivid picture of who she was. She was born the 4th of April, 1897, in Ukraine or Russia. I have a couple of different immigration records for Jenny, and they don't quite line up. But the family immigrated in 1909, and her original name, her given name, was Zelda Torobovsky. And it appears that the family, after immigrating, immediately settled in Chicago. In 1924, she reported that she was working as an instructor at Western Electric. At that time, Jenny was 27 years old and was single. Later, sometime after 1935, Jenny relocated to California. Looking at the San Francisco Examiner on December 5th, 1939, we see that Jenny Turbov and a man named Martin Hammer took out a marriage license. This was 1939. Now we're going to fast forward. I found their marriage certificate on familysearch.org. Jenny Turbov and Martin Hammer were married on December 30th, 1951. So that's a heck of a long engagement. About twelve years. They were both 54 years old at that time. They did not have any children together. That's one of those where I really want to know what happened there. And I'm sure there were many reasons for this very long engagement. While I was unable to locate a death notice or an obituary for Jenny Turbov, she does appear on Find a Grave. What's interesting is that her date of birth is listed there as April 4, 1893. But in at least a couple of her naturalization records, she gives her birth year as 1897. So there is a discrepancy there. And it's not clear whether Jenny adjusted her age or if that change happened later. What we do know is that she died on April 8th, 1975, and is listed as being 82 years old. She's buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery alongside her husband, Martin, who lived much longer and passed away in 1992. And this is where a site like Find a Grave becomes useful, not as an endpoint, but as a starting point. In Jenny's case, it lists her parents and siblings. And as you know, when the trail runs thin on one person, you move forward to siblings, to parents, to extended family, because that's often where the record picks up again and leads you back. If you go to any of the current online platforms that cover the Eastland disaster and search for these names, you'll start to see the gaps pretty quickly. Frank Terdina's name doesn't appear anywhere. Jenny Turbov has something of a biography, but there's no source citations, no way to trace it, no way to verify it. Ethel Stevenson and Rose Smoller are listed by name, but no biographical details. And when you move to the obituaries, it's the same story. Although the obituaries are interesting, there's no mention of the Eastland disaster in the obituaries for Rose Smoller, Ethel Stevenson, or Frank Tardina. I haven't been able to locate Jenny Turbov's obituary, but given the pattern I've seen, if an obituary does exist for Jenny, it probably doesn't mention the Eastland disaster. The only time these individuals are tied directly to the Eastland disaster is in 1935 in two separate newspaper accounts, the Chicago Sunday Tribune and the Berwin Life, sometimes called the Life. After that, this important information, this connection to the Eastland disaster simply wasn't researched or carried forward. The story of the Eastland disaster is not as small as it's been presented in the last few years. It's been compressed, but compression is not the same thing as loss. The records, all kinds of records are there. They're accessible, they're abundant, they're waiting. And what I've been doing here is simply returning to the records. And yes, it's messy sometimes as you hear. There are inconsistencies, contradictions, gaps, always, always more research to be done. That's what history actually looks like when you follow real people through real lives. Those who love genealogy or history or similar types of disciplines, we know we're not just engaging with facts, with numbers. We're engaging with people who are no longer here but still have a lot to teach us. And we want to establish a respectful relationship with each one of those people. Each one of them deserves to be remembered as completely as possible. And I've been laying the groundwork for that for the last three years, and we'll continue with the next set of stories in the coming weeks. But before we return to those stories, I want to take a detour because in the course of researching this episode, I went down another rabbit hole. I did, but I came across another story that I think is too extraordinary to hold back, and that is where we will be going next week. So thank you for joining me on this journey. I hope you enjoyed getting to know these people better. And in the meantime, take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and stay safe. I will talk to you next week. Goodbye for now. Hey, that's it for this episode, and thanks for coming along for the ride. Please subscribe or follow so you can keep up with all the episodes. And for more information, please go to my website. That's www.flowerinthher.com. I hope you'll consider buying my book available as audiobook, ebook, paperback, and hardcover because I still owe people money. And that's my running joke. But the one thing I'm serious about is that this podcast and my book are dedicated to the memory of all who experienced the Eastland disaster of nineteen fifteen. Goodbye for now.