guards would sit with him conversing and listening to their favorite serials.” [18] In fact, “a clue to his power [in prison] could be found in a recess carved in his tennis racket’s handle. He might have a couple of thousand dollars secreted there at any given time.” [19]
Warden Johnston described Capone this way: “He was suave and aggressive by turns, and it was apparent from the beginning that he was trying to show the other prisoners that he would find some way to get what he wanted inside, just as he had always got what he wanted when he was outside.” [20]
Capone’s challenge on Alcatraz was avoiding trouble from the other inmates. At one point Capone’s empire was worth $62 million [21] (more than $950 million in today’s dollars), and some inmates wanted him to bankroll their escape. “Upon arriving at the Island Al was approached… to advance $5000 to be used as an escape plan to hire a gun-boat.” [22] In 1936 a young punk named Jimmy Lucas stabbed Capone with a pair of barber scissors. Lucas’s motivation was simply to prove that he-not Capone-was the toughest guy on Alcatraz.
Capone, though a ruthless and vile human being, was not without his charming side. As Phyllis (Hess) Twinney, the daughter of the first doctor on Alcatraz, explained it to me: “Dad liked Al. But Dad was under no illusions about Al, who thought everyone was his servant.
“Even so, Al saved Dad’s life. Dad had to take visiting hours. The con ahead of Al came in and got really agitated. Every doctor had a little scalpel so he could lance something if needed. The guy went ballistic, grabbed up the scalpel, and came toward my father. Al heard the commotion. Al was very soft-footed for a big man, and he inched his way in, grabbed him from behind, and shook the scalpel out of his hand.” [23]
Although Warden Johnston tried to treat Capone as if he were no different from other convicts, in some small ways his infamy did penetrate the thick walls of Alcatraz. Many guards, as the story goes, gave Al their hats for him to dust off so they could brag, “Al Capone dusted off my hat.” [24] But so far as I know, Al Capone didn’t shine guards’ shoes. However, he did work at the shoe shop in his previous prison in Atlanta, so it is likely he was an accomplished shoe shiner.
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
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
Gennifer Choldenko
[1] JOLENE BABYAK
[2] ERIN CRAIG lived on Alcatraz Island from 1947-1949. Letter to Alcatraz Alumni Association President Chuck Stucker.
