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August 22-28, 2002 city beat He's Seen It All
Elwood P. Smith is a photojournalist with one bad eye and nine good fingers. Smith is also a man who enjoys the familiar. Known to his cronies as “Smitty,” the venerable photographer has been capturing the news of Philadelphia in the cross hairs of his camera lens since 1937. On Tuesday, in the ground floor offices of the Daily News, Smith, 83, observed his 65th anniversary in the business at the place where he has worked on and off for 59 years (Smith also spent six years shooting for the now-defunct Philadelphia Bulletin). "I'm a regular photographer," Smith says, smoothing his maroon tie, which complements the pink shirt that perfectly matches the maroon slacks, socks and sports coat. "I'm out there whenever an assignment calls. I'm out there five days a week.... Photography has been my love for a very long time."
Smith, a former WWII marine who still wears his insignia brass belt buckle every day of the week, says that while he's taken hundreds of thousands of pictures during his six-decade career, he has two favorites. One is the famous 1969 shot of then-Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo wearing a tuxedo with a nightstick jutting out of his cummerbund. The other is of members of the Black Panther Party barricaded in a store on 35th and Wallace streets during a police raid in 1970. "That's my all-time favorite story," Smith says of the Black Panther photo. "I was right there in the middle of the action. Bullets were flying all around, and the cops had [the Black Panthers] up against the wall and had forced them to undress. They were a bad bunch of people. That picture went all around the world." Born and raised in South Philly, Smith has been working the night shift at the Daily News for 40 years. Arriving promptly each workday at 7 p.m., Smith says that every day for 20 years he has carried a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with sunflower and sesame seeds on seven-grain bread, prepared by his wife, in the same brown paper bag. His wife, Anne, has ink-stamped the worn bag with his full name and a tiny picture of a man with a camera. "I absolutely love working the night shift," Smith says. "That's when things happen around here. My wife understands this and is wonderful about it. I take her out to dinner every night before I come to work." Smith has been married to Anne for 60 years. They met at church when they were both in junior high school. They have no children and are still very much in love, he says. Smith wears a simple gold wedding band on the third finger of his left hand. Many years ago, he says, he lost a piece of that finger in a lawnmower accident. "It was a stupid accident of my own doing," Smith says, rotating the ring on the mutilated digit. "Good thing I use my right hand to shoot. "And my left eye doesn't dilate," he adds, tilting his head back in the light, illuminating one bright blue eye; the other is dark and oddly focused. "I was hit with a hockey puck in 1980. Now I wear a contact lens and bifocals. It was scary -- not when I got hit and they took me into the Flyers dressing room and the doctor stitched up my eye. I got nervous when they transferred me to Wills Eye Hospital -- then I knew it was serious. "I didn't know if I'd ever see again. I'm practically blind when I take the contact lens out. But, all in all, my sight is still pretty good." Smith says he got the idea to become a photographer from his father, whose hobby was taking pictures with a Polaroid box camera. "My father never knew how amazed I was by the pictures he made," he says. "I mean, I'd see what he was pointing at and then I'd see what came out. That was so interesting to me. I wondered how he did it." Smith likes to brag that he can snap a hand-held photograph in an eighth of a second.
"There's a trick my father taught me," Smith says, smiling and squinting. "Right before you hit the shutter, hold your breath." On Monday night, the day and night crews at the Daily News threw Smith a surprise party. Folks from the Inquirer came downstairs to hang out; folks who retired from the newspapers years ago came back to pay their respects. "The party was very upbeat, and I think that Smitty was sort of impressed that so many people really respect and like him so much," says Wayne Bush, a photo desk assistant editor who's been at the Daily News for 20 years. "I worked nights with Smitty for about 15 of those years. This man is from the old school as far as his work ethic and the way he looks at things. The only way I see Smitty going out of here -- I hate to say it -- is on a stretcher." As for retiring, Smith scoffs at the mention. "As long as I'm capable and I'm able to do my work, I'll be around," he says. "If that's not the case, I'll leave on my own and no one will have to tell me. But if I ever do retire from here, I'll never shoot another picture again."
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