52 pages • 1 hour read
Tim Z. HernandezAll They Will Call You
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Section 2, Parts 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Section 2: “The Stories”, Section 2, Part 3: “José Sánchez Valdivia” - Section 2, Part 4: “Frank and Bobbie Atkinson”
Section 2, Part 3, Chapter 14 Summary: “Celio Sánchez Valdivia”
On February 22, 2014, Hernandez interviews Celio Sánchez Valdivia about his brother, José Sánchez Valdivia, who died in the plane crash. Celio says his brother left home when he was still young but that his brother’s best friend, José Sánchez González, is still living and would know more about him. In March, Hernandez arrives at the González residence. The family members tell him that José died the same day Hernandez called.
Eliseo, José González’s brother, tells Hernandez about the friendship of José González and José Valdivia. They were more like brothers than friends. They came from a small farming community in Mexico called La Estancia. Along with many people from their community, they worked picking crops in the San Joaquin Valley. La Estancia was very rural and quiet, unlike the San Joaquin Valley.
Section 2, Part 3, Chapter 15 Summary: “El Bambino Calls His Shot”
As a child, Valdivia dreamed of playing baseball. On October 1, 1932, Valdivia listened to Babe Ruth (“El Bambino”) call and then hit a home run in game three of the World Series on the radio. One of the old men remarked that “Luque would have struck el Bambino out” (85). He tells Valdivia that Domingo de Guzman Luque was a great pitcher from Cuba who played all over the US. At that moment, Valdivia swore he would become a baseball player.
When he was a teenager, Valdivia joined his father Mateo picking crops in Stockton with his brother, Ramón.
Section 2, Part 3, Chapter 16 Summary: “The Mexican League”
Between 1943 and 1947, Valdivia lives in Stockton. Even though his father urges him to work, Valdivia swings at dirt clods with his hoe, pretending to play baseball. One day, González sees him swinging and throws a rock for him. From that moment, they are friends. They work together to start at baseball club as part of the “Mexican League.” After work, the campesinos (agricultural workers) play ragtag baseball. They don’t have uniforms, but baseball hats with the letter S for Stockton on them. Valdivia never takes his off.
One day, the mayordomo, the manager of the camp, tells Mateo, Valdivia’s father, that Mateo has to go back to Mexico and then return to the US with a renewed visa. Mateo is nervous, but a few weeks later he is back in Stockton.
Section 2, Part 4, Chapter 17 Summary: “Mary Lou and Helen Atkinson”
On March 17, 2013, Hernandez interviews Mary Lou and Helen Atkinson, the younger sisters of the pilot Frank Atkinson. They tell Hernandez that Frank, who they call Frankie, was a funny, loving brother who was very religious and hardworking. As a child, he dreamed of being a fighter pilot, but his eyesight was poor, so he ate lots of carrots to try and improve it. He ate so many carrots that he turned slightly orange from the beta-carotene.
Section 2, Part 4, Chapter 18 Summary: “An American Dreamer”
Hernandez describes Frankie’s childhood. Frankie grew up in Rochester, New York. He was an athlete and a leader who played quarterback in high school. He dated a beautiful girl named Dorothy “Dottie” Anderson, although he also spent some time with another girl named Bobbie Kesselring. To earn extra money for the family, Frankie worked processing photographs at the Eastman Kodak Company, the main employer in Rochester.
Sometimes, Frankie’s father John would come home and see his son watching the sky for airplanes. His obsession with planes and preparing to be a pilot led to his breakup with Dottie their senior year of high school, although they soon got back together.
One day, on his way back from the library, Frankie runs into Bobbie and her mother, Elizabeth. Bobbie invites him to watch her bowl in the finals of the Rochester Bowling Annual, but he doesn’t go. A week later, his father shows him her picture in the paper announcing her win and Frankie feels guilty for not supporting her.
Section 2, Part 4, Chapter 19 Summary: “The Assimilation of Elizabeth Liebersbach”
In 1912, 11-year-old Elizabeth Liebersbach is on a ship from Poland to Ellis Island in New York Harbor with her father, Jakob. He points out the Statue of Liberty to his daughter and tells her this will be their new home. In New York, Jakob works at an ice plant where he catches pneumonia. He dies soon after, leaving Elizabeth alone in New York.
Elizabeth survives by following her father’s advice: “Remain invisible” (104). She works hard. At 18, she moves to Rochester. She has a brief relationship with a man named John Koch and gets pregnant. Koch leaves soon after, but she decides to keep and raise the child, who she names Lillian Mary. She calls the child Baby or “Bubbie” in her Polish accent. In 1931, she meets a World War I veteran named Oscar Kesselring and they marry. A few years later, Kesselring began to have mental health issues and was institutionalized.
Elizabeth lives an isolated life, but her daughter, who has Americanized her nickname to Bobbie, seeks excitement in bowling and time with Frankie Atkinson, despite her mother’s disapproval and Frankie’s relationship with Dottie.
Section 2, Part 4, Chapter 20 Summary: “Frankie Gets His Chance”
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, Frankie enlists in the military at the age of 24. Dottie is furious and says she will not wait for him. He says that this is his opportunity to finally go to flight school. She gives him back her engagement ring and walks away.
Section 2, Part 4, Chapter 21 Summary: “Flight Training”
Thousands of men apply for Aviation Cadet Training but only a few make it through to become certified pilots. Frankie “committed himself to training harder than anyone else” (111). He occasionally receives letters from his family at the training camp in Montgomery, Alabama, but never any from Dottie. During that time, Frankie became familiar with the C-47 cargo plane, nicknamed the “Gooneybird.” After a few months in training, Frankie is appointed corporal in the Air Corps and earns the right to fly planes. He is put on active duty on November 10, 1942. Before he leaves the training camp, he trains other new cadets.
Section 2, Part 4, Chapter 22 Summary: “Frankie Goes to War”
From 1942 to 1945, Frankie is on active duty in India, where he flies supplies over the “Hump,” a treacherous passing over the Himalaya Mountains. One day, the Gooneybird he is flying goes down in the Himalayas during a lightning storm. He is presumed dead until he returns to camp a few days later, making him a legendary pilot. During his time, he thinks very little about his home in Rochester. The thing he misses most is hamburgers. One day, the army arranges for him to have one shipped in from hundreds of miles away. Coverage of it makes the local paper in Rochester. His mom calls to say she saw the coverage and that she is proud of him, although she worries about his haggard appearance.
After three years of service, close to the end of the war, Frankie receives a postcard with the note: “Remember me? Love, Bobbie” (118).
Section 2, Part 4, Chapter 23 Summary: “Dear Bobbie”
For the next two years, Bobbie and Frankie write each other regularly. On January 10, 1947, Frankie leaves the military and gets a job working for Airline Transport Carriers in Long Beach. His job is to fly mostly cargo flights from Burbank to Oakland. Frankie and Bobbie plan to get married in May. Hernandez reprints a letter from Frankie to Bobbie describing the arrangements he is making for their wedding. They get married in May in Long Beach. Elizabeth, Bobbie’s mother, does not attend because she is afraid of flying.
Section 2, Parts 3-4 Analysis
Section 2, Parts 3 and 4 cover the stories and backgrounds of three of the victims of the plane crash: José Sánchez Valdivia and Frankie and Bobbie Atkinson. Frankie and Bobbie Atkinson are different from the other victims who are covered in the text. They are white Americans who were not being held in detention on the plane but were rather assisting immigration services in deporting the Mexican “detainees.” It is significant that, although Hernandez takes care to include their stories as well, theirs are written about last and least. Hernandez’s main focus in the text is to recount the stories of the Latino victims whose lives were overlooked by the media and who were buried in an unmarked mass grave following the plane crash. Despite the Atkinsons not being the focus, however, Hernandez treats Frankie and Bobbie’s story with the same compassion that he does the other victims.
Most notably, Hernandez connects Bobbie’s story to the greater history of American Immigrant Migration and Labor. In Chapter 19, he describes how Bobbie’s mother, Elizabeth Liebersbach, arrived in the US from Poland at the age of 11 with her father. Like the Mexican migrants covered elsewhere in the text, Jakob Liebersbach came to the US to find work because of an economic downturn in his home country. In a further parallel, he only intended to stay “as long as it takes” to make money (104). Like other immigrants, he does difficult, dangerous work for low wages. This background, and the early death of her father, impacts Elizabeth, who never feels entirely at home in her new country. She takes to heart her father’s admonitions that “we are guests in another man’s house, and so we must live modestly” (104). The precarity of her life impacts her daughter, Bobbie, who is likewise kept out of social situations and learns to grow up with very little.
Although there are key differences between Jakob and Elizabeth’s story and those of the migrant Mexican workers covered elsewhere in the text, such as their country of origin and the time period, Hernandez emphasizes their similarities. As Bobbie had no surviving family members, Hernandez’s information of her character and personality came from his interviews with Frank’s family. As a result, Hernandez’s account of Bobbie’s mother’s childhood is historical fiction based largely on these accounts and immigration records. Hernandez deliberately chose to present Jakob and Elizabeth’s story in a way that resonates with those of the other immigrants.
In Part 3 about José Sánchez Valdivia, it becomes clear that part of Hernandez’s urgency about collecting the stories is the age of the “story keepers.” When Hernandez contacts Celio, Valdivia’s brother, he learns that Celio has recently had a stroke. When Hernandez arrives at the home of José Sánchez González, he learns that Valdivia’s best friend had recently passed away. Hernandez underscores the fragility of memory, such as when he interviews Frankie’s sisters, who are themselves elderly, imagining “their hair a shock of white” (96).
Although they lived very different lives, Hernandez underscores an important similarity between Valdivia and Frankie: They were both dreamers. Frankie spent his childhood dreaming of becoming a pilot. Valdivia dreamed of becoming a baseball player. However, their class and national backgrounds led to very different outcomes. Frankie, a white American, was able to achieve his dream, whereas Valdivia’s father and brothers dismissed his dreams as “pura ilusiones” (87), sheer illusions. While Valdivia was able to play in the ad-hoc Mexican League, of which he was very proud, he never had the opportunity to play professional baseball because he was obligated to work in the fields to feed his family.
