My Father
Edward Arthur James "Ted" Richardson was born on Primrose Day, April 19th, 1901 in Lewisham District, London, England. He was the son of Arthur James Richardson and Martha Smith. According to his birth record, Teddie was born at 8 Trilby Road, Sydenham but both he and his father gave his birthplace as 14 Trilbury Road, Forest Hill, London. As a child he was blond and blue eyed, but in adulthood his hair was quite dark.
As babies, Teddie and younger brother Ben sailed with their parents to Canada, arriving at Quebec City. They settled in Toronto and three more siblings were born there. When Ted was a teenager, the family immigrated to the United States, first settling in Florida. They gradually moved north, as his mother, Martha, found disagreeable the hot weather of the deep south. She proclaimed that Maryland was "just right" and they finally settled down.
Ted was fond of hunting, motorcycling, boating and fishing, painting and gathering wild herbs and mushrooms for eating. He liked to get involved in the latest technology, so I am sure that he would be into computers today. Early in life he travelled to Bay Ridge, Maryland to take a ride in an airplane when that opportunity first arose. Probably his first automobile was the sporty roadster with a rumble seat which he used to drive to Gettysburg for family picnics. He was a pioneer of radio in the Baltimore area where he and Arthur Godfrey were friends, or "rivals" as some report. Daddy always claimed that he was the one who taught Godfrey to play the ukelele. They also rode motorcycles together. Ted was an artist, musician, wrote music and patented a mason's hammer, which he and his father invented. He obtained a tape recorder as soon as that invention became available to record his own music.
When a young man living on Pratt Street in Baltimore he worked as a streetcar conductor. He loved playing music especially the saxophone as a young man during the "Big Band" era and later the banjo ukulele with his own hillbilly band, The Blue Ridge Rangers. During World War II, he operated a radio repair shop in Halethorpe, Maryland. In the mid 1940s he worked at a boatyard on Bodkin Creek, near the Chesapeake Bay. In the 1950s he returned to brick masonry, which he had learned from his father. During his senior years he became involved in the East Baltimore folk art of screen painting and, with his brother Ben, became a local celebrity artist.
Ted died on December 29, 1986 in Towson, Baltimore County, Maryland and was buried on December 31, 1986 next to his parents at Meadowridge Memorial Park in Elkridge, Howard County, Maryland. He was married to Lillian Louise Via and they were the parents of four children, Edna, Arthur, Vickie and Ted.
1901~1986 
