All They Will Call You

All They Will Call You: The Telling of the Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon (2017) is a documentary novel by author and poet Tim Z. Hernandez. Hernandez is the grandchild of Mexican migrant workers, and he has written a number of texts dealing with themes of Mexican immigration to the US, life in California’s Central Valley, and related topics. In All They Will Call You: The Telling of the Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon, Hernandez writes about the January 28, 1948, plane crash near Los Gatos, California, that resulted in the death of 32 people—mainly Mexican migrant workers who were being deported—using a mix of literary forms including memoir, historical fiction, primary documents, and oral history. In 2018, Hernandez was recognized by the California State Senate for his research into the crash. The title of the book is a reference to a lyric from a Woody Guthrie song about the plane crash. Hernandez’s 2024 sequel to the book, entitled They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, documents his further research into the victims and their families.

This guide uses and cites the 2017 University of Arizona Press paperback edition of All They Will Call You: The Telling of the Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon.

Content Warning: The source material features graphic depictions of death and references to suicide. Additionally, the source material references offensive terms for Latino people.

Summary

All They Will Call You: The Telling of the Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon is divided into five sections. In Section 1: The Witnessing, Tim Hernandez describes what those present near Los Gatos Canyon saw in the moments and days after the plane crash on January 28, 1948. Hernandez describes the shock and horror of the residents of the area with a particular focus on what Red Childers, the landowner where the plane crash happened, and his daughter, June Childers, saw. After the plane crash, workers from the nearby prison labor camp worked to put out the fire and find pieces of the victims’ bodies. An official investigation attempted to determine exactly what happened and who had died. The newspapers reported on the story, but they inaccurately transmitted the names of the victims.

In Section 2: The Stories, Hernandez interviews the friends and family members of six of the victims and shares their backgrounds. He begins with stories about Luis Miranda Cuevas, a Mexican agricultural worker who left his village to earn money for his family and to pay for a lavish wedding with his beloved, Casimira Navarro López. Hernandez describes the challenges Luis faced coming to the US to work, including punitive immigration measures and the dangers of crossing the river.

Then, Hernandez tells the stories of two men from the same village, Guadalupe Ramírez Lara and Ramón Paredes González. They left their rural village in Mexico to earn money so that their small collective farm could dig a well for irrigation. Hernandez gets most of his information about them through an interview with their descendants, Jaime and Guillermo Ramírez. The final migrant worker Hernandez describes in detail is José Sánchez Valdivia, who left Mexico to work picking crops in Bakersfield, California, with his father and brother. Although Valdivia was an agricultural worker, he dreamed of becoming a baseball player and organized a league in the farm camp.

Hernandez also interviews the remaining family of the pilot and stewardess, a married couple named Frankie and Bobbie Atkinson. He describes how Frankie always dreamed of becoming a pilot. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Frankie joined the military and served as a cargo pilot during World War II. After the war, he married Bobbie, a girl from his hometown of Rochester. They lived in Long Beach, California, where Frankie worked as a pilot for a small aviation company.

In Section 3: They’re Flyin’ ’em Back, Hernandez alternately describes both the moments leading up to the plane crash and how the six people ended up on that flight. He uses historical fiction to describe the feelings of anxiety and anticipation of the passengers on the aircraft. About two hours into the flight, the engine catches on fire and the aircraft explodes. Some of the passengers died in the explosion while others died after falling out of the sky. The four migrant workers discussed in the book ended up on the flight after being caught by immigration officials. Frankie Atkinson was scheduled to fly the plane that day, and his wife Bobbie agreed to fill in as a stewardess. Also on the flight was Officer Chaffin, an immigration officer, and the co-pilot. There were no survivors.

In Section 4: The Power of a Song (One More Name), Hernandez describes how the song “Plane Crash at Los Gatos (Deportee)” came into existence. The great folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics after hearing about the plane crash. A folk musician named Marty Hoffmann put the words to music and shared it with the folk singer Pete Seeger. Seeger recorded the song and popularized it. It was through the song that author Tim Hernandez learned about the plane crash and felt inspired to research it.

In Section 5: Field Notes (2012-2015), Hernandez shares excerpts of his field notes from his research into the victims and their families. He notes the difficulties he faced in finding them and connecting their names to their stories. He also describes how he worked to have a headstone made with the names of the passengers on them, but how insufficient of a memorial it seems.