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Tampa Woman Who Helped Foil U-Boat Plot Dies At 87

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By RICH SHOPES

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 23, 2008

TAMPA - Before Carmen Madsen was a dressmaker and world traveler, the Tampa native uncovered a plot to deploy German U-boats off Florida's coast.

Madsen, a language expert, was working in Miami for the War Department during World War II when she was asked to screen several letters from a man in Brazil.

To Madsen, the letters contained odd, suspicious phrasing. "It was a strange way of saying something that could have been said much easier," said her daughter, Karen Madsen, of Aventura in Miami-Dade County.

The letters went to a supervisor and eventually were determined to contain coded messages about a plot to deploy submarines off Florida's coast, "for what I don't know," Karen Madsen said.

Madsen said her mother never thought of her actions as a big deal, but before long, barbed wire was being strung across Miami Beach and her mom received a special commendation from the War Department.

"The joke was she was the reason there was razor wire on Miami Beach," said Karen Madsen, who didn't hear about her mom's work at the War Department until high school.

"She was supposed to not talk about it for a number of years. She just always thought it was a neat story and she had made a contribution."

Madsen grew up in Tampa as Carmen Alvarez, and spent most of her life here. After the war, she ran a dress shop out of her home, traveled extensively with her husband and raised three daughters and a son in Tampa. She died Sept. 15. She was 87.

After her time in Miami, Carmen Alvarez requested a transfer to an air base in Venice. That's where she met Henry Madsen of St. Paul, Minn., a lieutenant in the Army Air Forces and the man she would marry.

She was a brown-haired beauty, about 5 feet 4 inches tall, quick-witted and with a dry sense of humor. Once, during an excursion to New York, orchestra leader Benny Goodman noticed her, put down his clarinet and asked her to dance, Karen Madsen said.

Carmen and Henry Madsen moved to suburban Chicago after the war but eventually settled in South Tampa in 1953. Madsen ran a dress-making and alternations business out of her house on Thatcher Avenue between El Prado Boulevard and Euclid Avenue and her husband worked for a local advertising agency.

By the 1980s, Madsen was helping her husband run his own ad agency, which he ran until 1987.

Afterward, the couple played golf and took numerous trips, including cruises to the Caribbean, Mexico and Canada, and day trips across Florida.

"Mom never drove. She just didn't like it," Karen Madsen said.

The couple were married 61 years. Henry Madsen died in 2005. Carmen Madsen lived for a while at an assisted living center on Bayshore Boulevard.

"She was a great lady. I didn't know anybody who didn't like her. 'Salt of the earth' is overused, but that was her," Karen Madsen said.

Reporter Rich Shopes can be reached at (813) 259-7633 or rshopes@tampatrib.com.

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