Al Capone never worked as a waiter on Alcatraz either, but the Officers’ Club sometimes employed convicts as waiters, and there is anecdotal evidence of convicts spitting or placing broken glass in a hated guard’s food.
Unless you were a friend of an Alcatraz civilian, or a family member of a convict, it was practically impossible to gain access to Alcatraz. VIPs and celebrities, however, were given tours on a regular basis and the administration might very well put on the dog for such visits.
There is one photo that documents a visit of J. Edgar Hoover to Alcatraz, but it’s likely he visited more than once, as creating a maximum security prison on Alcatraz was his brainchild. Eliot Ness was never, to my knowledge, on the island, so his inclusion in that scene was entirely fictional. Mae Capone was a frequent visitor to the island, and if the press got wind of a visit, reporters mobbed her at the Fort Mason dock where she boarded the ferry for Alcatraz.
The story of Willy One Arm picking the pocket of J. Edgar Hoover is fictional. It’s highly unlikely such a ploy would ever have been pulled on the head of the FBI, but the idea for that scene came from an incident relayed by Clifford Fish. According to Fish, Associate Warden Miller liked to pull that routine on visiting dignitaries. He used a convict by the name of Pivaroff, a pickpocket or “dip,” as it was sometimes called. Miller would give the nod to Pivaroff once he decided who would be the mark, and Pivaroff would pick his pocket. Then Miller would hand the visiting VIP his wallet and say, “You just had your pocket picked on Alcatraz.” [25]
And strangely enough, movies were shown to the convicts on Alcatraz twice a month. The favorite movie star of many of the Alcatraz inmates in the late thirties and early forties? Shirley Temple.
Although no escape exactly like the one depicted in Al Capone Shines My Shoes was ever tried, many of the details are based on other escape attempts. One convict escaped by impersonating an officer-though he only got as far as neighboring Angel Island before he was caught. Another convict smuggled a bar spreader into the cell house inside his steel guitar. The flat soft prison bars in the Hole (like those in the hospital) were cut in that same escape attempt. An abrasive cleanser and dental floss could be used for this-and, yes, dental floss did exist in 1935. [26]
Some convicts also befriended mice. “Hungry for companionship, some inmates made pets out of mice they found in their cells. They made nests in their bathrobe pockets…” [27] In another account, one inmate kept his mouse in his shirt pocket and surreptitiously fed him food crumbs when the officers weren’t looking.
After having connected directly to more than twenty people who lived on the Rock during the penitentiary years, the one sentiment that seemed to come through in each person’s story was what a close-knit group this was. As one man who lived on the island as a boy put it: “[Living on Alcatraz was like] having a lot of uncles everywhere to watch over us.” [28] Or as Phyllis Twinney said when I asked her if she’d ever thought of running away from Alcatraz: “Why would anyone run away from Alcatraz? It was home.”
More About Natalie
Like Moose, Piper, Annie, Scout, and the other kids in this book, Natalie is a fictional character. I did borrow some of the behaviors and perhaps a little of the essence of my own sister, Gina Johnson, in building Natalie’s character. Gina was diagnosed with classic autism at the age of five.
If Natalie were a real person alive today, she would probably also be diagnosed somewhere on the autism spectrum. But since autism had not been identified in 1935, I could not use that word in this novel.
Though I do have a personal connection to autism, I did not set out to write a book containing a character with autism. When I got the idea to write about Alcatraz, I signed up to be a docent on the island. During the year I was an Alcatraz volunteer, I found myself thinking a lot about Gina. The island reminded me of her. Alcatraz is a lonely block of concrete plunked down in the middle of the spectacular San Francisco Bay, close enough to see the glittering city lights but set apart forever and always-a prison in paradise. Gina was beautiful and oddly perceptive but separated from the rest of us, locked in her own tormented world. When Gina was eight, she drew a picture of a stick figure in a prisonlike box and said, “This is Gina.”
Though we still know surprisingly little about what causes autism, the treatment options have improved dramatically in the last fifteen years. The possibility of partial or even complete recovery from autism is greater now than it was when my sister was a kid. The chances of a life rich in its own rewards for children on the autism spectrum is much more likely today. For Gina, who died when she was eighteen, autism was a prison without a key. I like to think I’ve given my sister’s spirit a new life in the pages of these books.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the help of so many people who have generously shared details of their lives growing up on Alcatraz Island. Most especially I would like to thank Chuck Stucker and his lovely wife, Leta, who allowed me to park in their living room for days on end combing the amazing Alcatraz archives Chuck has compiled. I would also like to thank George DeVincenzi, who told me so many crisp and colorful stories about his life as a guard on Alcatraz Island. A debt of gratitude goes to Rocky Chandler for his book Alcatraz , the Hard Years and for allowing me to “shake the hand that shook the hand of Al Capone.” I am also grateful for the help of Jolene Babyak, Sharon Haller, Ed Faulk, Phyllis “Sweetie” Hess Twinney, and the late Clifford Fish, whose stories about his twenty-four years working as a guard on Alcatraz -as videotaped by Chuck Stucker-were truly amazing. I would also like to thank Darwin Coons, ex-bank robber, for answering my questions about what it was like behind bars on Alcatraz.
A special thank you to my team of expert readers: Peter Seraichick, Dr. Douglas Ellison, Dr. Shelley Hwang, Chuck Stucker, Michael Esslinger, Phyllis “Sweetie” Hess Twinney. They all provided me with expertise I don’t possess, but all mistakes are definitely mine and mine alone.
A heartfelt thanks to my husband, Jacob, my son, Ian, and my daughter, Kai: the world’s best family, and my editor, Kathy Dawson. Editing me is sort of like trying to put a seat belt on the Energizer Bunny and Kathy always manages to make it look effortless. I would like to thank Betsy Groban, Jen Haller, Lauri Hornik, and my agent, Elizabeth Harding, of Curtis, Brown for their graciousness in all things.
And most of all I would like to thank the many many teachers in the United States and in the United Kingdom who have taught Al Capone Does My Shirts in their classrooms. It is your work that has brought my book to life for your students and I will always be indebted to you.
Gennifer Choldenko
