Growing up Capone: An interview with a granddaughter of the legendary Chicago Outfit boss

Diane Patricia Capone knows her surname is synonymous with Chicago history. Yet, she didn’t grow up in the city where her grandfather Al Capone became legendary. She and her three sisters rarely spoke publicly about their family until Diane published her first book in 2019, “Al Capone: Stories My Grandmother Told Me.” She working on a second book that’s due out this fall, but not in time for an Oct. 8 Capone auction.

During a recent phone interview I asked Diane about her upbringing and why her family decided now is a good time to sell items that belonged to her parents and grandparents.

Q: Earlier this morning I did not know Al Capone’s son had a daughter!

A: Al Capone’s son actually had four daughters. My grandfather had one son, Albert Francis Capone, who was called “Sonny” by most of the people who knew him. My dad and mom had four daughters.

Q: Can you give me a little bit of background on where you grew up? I’m assuming it wasn’t Chicago, right?

A: We never lived in Chicago. My grandfather, and if you don’t mind I’ll call him “Papa” because that’s what we always called him, Papa bought a house in Florida on Palm Island, which is connected to Miami Beach. Papa bought a house there in 1928 for my grandmother. Basically, it was a birthday present for my grandmother. So, from 1928, the family primarily lived in the Palm Island house.

When we were born, my sisters and I were all born in Miami Beach, and we lived a short distance away in an area called Miami Shores. We lived there most of our childhood and ultimately moved to California to Palo Alto when I was a senior in high school, so that was in the 1960s and have lived in California ever since.

Q: Can you tell me what it was like growing up in Miami Beach and if you used the last name Capone?

A: All of us — we were born at St. Francis Hospital in Miami Beach and all of us on our birth certificate — my birth certificate says Diane Capone. That is the name I lived with all the way through school and my sisters did as well. All of us married — three of the four of us married very young. So, we lived with our married names after that.

As children, there were times when people would ask questions that weren’t very nice or they would make derogatory remarks. We were very, very fortunate, though, because my father and mother were very protective and very loving. They told us that we had to expect that might happen, but my father said, “Just realize that people don’t mean to hurt your feelings. They’re ignorant or sometimes people just don’t know any better. And don’t let it bother you.” My father always thought we were perfect — and my grandfather always did, too.

I felt like my father gave us little suits of armor and so we were able to handle the times when things weren’t as pleasant as they could have been.

We also were very fortunate that we went to a Catholic school in Miami. The nuns wouldn’t put up with any bullying at all. And so, if anybody made any nasty comments, they didn’t make it again.

We were very fortunate and, for the most part, had very happy childhoods.

Q: What was your father like?

A: My father was, well, hands down, one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever known in my life. My husband has always said — and we still call my daddy “Daddy” even as old ladies. Daddy was the most loving man and my husband has often said how much he felt that my father embraced him. And all of the men in my family have felt that way as well.

Daddy just was incredibly loving. He showed what he had been raised with. He was adored and he passed it on to everybody he came in contact with. I’ve heard derogatory remarks (about him). It’s horribly offensive and so underserved because nobody was a kinder man or more loving than he was.

Q: Could you describe your mother a little bit for me?

A: My mother is Diana Casey. My mother passed away over 30 years ago now. She moved to Florida when she was a young girl. She was only 13 or 14 years old. Her family was from Tennessee. They moved to Miami Beach and bought a home there. My mother attended St. Pat’s Catholic school in Miami Beach — the same school where Daddy went. And, that’s how they met. They met as young teenagers. They went through high school together after being introduced by friends, a lot of them were in their wedding party in years to come. So, basically, they grew up together at St. Pat’s, and my mother’s family was crazy about my Dad and my father’s family was crazy about my mother.

My grandfather, after he came home to Palm Island, always though of her as the daughter he didn’t have. So, there was tremendous affection. And my mother who wound up living here in California ultimately worked in real estate. She was a businesswoman and she had a very full life, too, with all of us and lots of grandchildren. So she was a very, very devout Catholic, Irish ancestry and she had a very happy life until she passed — very prematurely — back in 1989.

Q: One of the lots in the auction is a bust of Diana “Boogie” Casey Capone. Is that your mother?

A: It is. And actually it was pronounced “BOO-gee.” My mother’s name was Diana Ruth Casey. Her little brother, who was 10 years younger than her, started calling her Boogie and, somehow, he got that out of what her real name was and it stuck. In the family, she was called Boogie. It’s really funny because Daddy, when he met her, always called her by her last name. He always called her Casey. Throughout the years, the people who knew her as a little girl called her Boogie, the people who knew her as Daddy’s girlfriend and then wife called her Casey and then, later in life when she was here in California she was Diana. She had different names for different times in her life.

Q: How long did you have with your grandfather before he died?

A: Very, very short amount of time. We were very little. One of the pictures that is for sale at the auction is a photograph that was taken at Christmas time — in fact it was on Christmas Day — a month before Papa died. My and my two sisters were on the dock, where he had boats. We were standing out on the dock with my grandparents and you can see we were just very little girls. I was only 3 years old.

I’m very blessed to have a really good memory so I do remember playing with him. I remember walking in the gardens with him. I couldn’t hold onto his hand, my hands weren’t big enough, but I could hold onto his finger. He would walk me around the garden and point out all the different little figurines that my grandmother had gotten for us — characters from Disney — and all the different flowers. He would sit and hold us and read to us. The memories I have of him are always with a big smile on his face and being very loving and affectionate.

The memory that’s probably most profound is the one I have of him when he died. The day that he died we were taken, my older sister and me, upstairs to his bedroom and my father lifted us up to the bed so we could kiss him. I remember Papa looking at me and he just said, “I love you, baby girl.” That is a memory that has been with me since I was 3 years old and I will never forget it as long as I live.

Q: Did you come to Chicago for his funeral and burial?

A: No. My mother and father came to Chicago. My sisters and I stayed here. He was buried in January. He died Jan. 25. His funeral was supposed to be as private as they could make it with just the family and the closest people to them. My sisters and I did not come to the funeral. In fact, we did not come to Chicago again for quite a long time after my grandfather died. I remember coming back in the 1950s, going to his house on Prairie Avenue and visiting with my great-grandmother, his mother, Grandma Capone. But I did not spend much time in Chicago at all.

Q: If you didn’t visit Chicago that often, then it sounds like, maybe, your father didn’t want to come back here?

A: I won’t say that he didn’t want to come back to Chicago. It’s just that his life was in Florida. Most of the relatives of my grandfather’s would come back and forth to the island to visit us. So, my father had a family in Florida so he went up there for the funeral, but the whole family was very glad to move to Florida. And I know that when my grandfather bought the house down there in 1928 my grandmother was thrilled because he made it very clear that he wanted to distance himself from the life that they had had in Chicago. And that’s what he attempted to do.

Q: I want to ask you about your move to California. Did the entire Capone family move to California?

A: My mother and dad, after many years of a very happy marriage, their marriage started to fall apart. We had an aunt who lived in Palo Alto — actually it was Daddy’s aunt — and she was very close to my mother. She suggested my mother come out and give herself a break from everything and think it through. So, we came out to her house in Palo Alto. Her name was Winnie Coughlin. We went there initially and wound up staying in Palo Alto.

I think my mother always thought that Daddy would eventually join us, too, but it didn’t work out that way. So, he continued to stay in Florida and came back and forth to see us all of the time. In 1986 when his second wife passed away and my grandmother both passed in a period of about a month, we convinced him it was time to come to California. So, he moved out here and we all were so thankful and so thrilled because we got to spend almost the last 20 years of his life together. We were very, very close to both of our parents.

Q: Can you give me some background on how you and your sisters decided these would be the items you put up for sale in the auction?

A: So, all of these items were in the Palm Island house and belonged to my grandparents. When my grandfather died, my grandmother continued living there in the house, but most of the furniture in the living room was covered up with sheets. We never used the living room again. We never ate a meal in the dining room again. She never slept in the master bedroom again.

They had a guest quarters at the island, actually, when we stayed there — and we used to stay there with my grandmother all the time — we stayed in the guest quarters with her and she basically moved into the guest quarters. During the day, the kitchen was used and there were large porches that ran the length of the house on three different sides and these large porches were where we spent our time. There were big tables and chairs and couches and so forth. There were times when there would be at least 20 people there for a meal but it was always done on the porches — it was never done in the main body of the house. And as I said, she never used the master bedroom again.

Years later when I was brushing her hair one day — we used to call her “Momma Mae” — and I asked her, “Momma Mae, why don’t you ever go into your bedroom anymore?” And she said, “I had such happy times there with Papa and he’s not there any more and I don’t want to go into that room any more.”

She continued to live there for several years and, ultimately when she sold the house, the things that she was the most fond of went with her to a much smaller home where she lived with her sister and brother-in-law, also in Florida. Ultimately, when my grandmother died, those things all went to my father. My father brought them out to California. We were given these things after Daddy died. So, Daddy died in 2004.

So, basically, these things have been in our family since the late 20s and my sisters and I — we lost my oldest sister some years ago, which was just devastating to all of us — but as we’ve continued to get older we’re very mindful of the fact that we’re getting up there in years and we know the stories that go with some of these items. We know who they belonged to. We decided if we were ever going to do anything to make sure they were properly taken care of that we had to move on it.

And then, quite honestly, Kori, in the last two years with the fires we’ve had here in northern California — two summers in a row now — my husband and I have had suitcases packed, thinking we might have to evacuate. We realized that there is no way that if we had to move that we could save any of these things. Several months ago we made the decision that it was time for us to start looking into it.

Literally, the first people we called were Witherell’s. They are the company here in Sacramento. The name came up because we knew them from “Antiques Roadshow” on PBS. They’re very involved in that. And also, Witherell’s is a family-owned company. Brad Witherell, the father, started the company back in the 60s. It’s still family-owned and it’s still run by his son, Brian. We thought we would start with the local company, but we fully intended to go to all the big auction houses and see what the options would be. We met Witherell’s, they immediately came out to the house the next day and as soon as we met them in person we had an instant rapport and decided we had found our people. We didn’t want to go any place else.

They have taken care of us and taken care of all of our things. We’re very, very pleased with what they are doing.

Q: When you’re going through this process, it has to be a difficult thing to take all of these things that have been together for so long and break them apart. Did you ever think about approaching a museum, a college or someone who might have been able to accept the whole collection?

A: We actually have talked with a couple of museums and we wound up deciding that this route that we have chosen is a better way to go for us. I’m quite sure that there will be some museums who will be bidding on some of the pieces. I’m quite sure that some museums will be bidding on some of these items, but the way it is being handled by Witherell’s really opens it up to the whole world.

Everybody will have a chance to take a look and see what is best for them, what they can afford and what means the most to them.

Q: Are there any plans, among your family, for what to do with the money that comes as a result of this auction?

A: Well, we don’t have any formal plans at all right now. We do know — for a fact — that Uncle Sam is going to take about half of everything that comes in. So, half of it is spoken for already — or darn close to it. We also have charities that we are involved in. I’m sure there will a large amount that goes in that direction. And we have large families. But any official decisions, whatever comes out of the auction will have to split amongst my sisters so each person will have to make the decision how they want to handle whatever we wind up getting out of this whole thing.

Q: We talked a little bit about what it was like to grow up with the last name Capone, and I was interested to read that you put together a book in 2019 about your experiences. Was it about trying to get your memories down so future generations would know what your life was like? What do you see your family’s legacy being?

A: Let me just say that when I began this book several years ago, it was a labor of love but it was very difficult for me to do. We have lived very private lives. We have never been flamboyant, we’ve never been in the media. A lot of people we knew — unless they knew us very well — didn’t even know what our maiden names were. It wasn’t that we were being secretive, it’s just that we had married names so it didn’t come up.

When I made the decision to try to write this book, it was in reaction or in response to all the things I’ve heard and read over the years that were grossly inaccurate about my grandparents. So, I was very blessed that for many, many years of my grandmother’s life she came out to California and she stayed at my house and told me all the wonderful stories of her growing up, when she fell in love with Papa and what their lives were like and who he was to her. So, the book that I wrote was an attempt to set the story straight, to honor my grandmother and to tell the true story that I knew, the personal side of Al Capone.

Obviously, I knew nothing about his public life and didn’t know anything until I was a grownup and read things about him. A lot of what’s been written is inaccurate. There are some authors who have done fabulous jobs of research and documenting things. It’s about as close to the truth as anybody could come who hadn’t live through it.

(Capone likes John J. Binder’s ”Al Capone’s Beer Wars: A Complete History of Organized Crime in Chicago During Prohibition” and Deirdre Bair’s ”Al Capone: His Life, Legacy, and Legend.”)

There have been so many stories that have been inaccurate and so many films that have portrayed him in a way that was completely untrue. So, that was my purpose in writing the book to tell the true story I knew about the personal man, and it does include some stories about our childhood, but it ended with when Papa died.

I’m working on a second book right now, which is called “The Capone Girls.” It’s a story of what happened to the Capone family after Papa died. Hopefully, it will be out this fall.

Q: Will your book be out in time for the auction?

A: I’m still polishing it. ... it certainly will be out this year, but it probably won’t make it in time for the auction.

Q: Can you tell me what your adult life has been like? And, have you used your married name?

A: I married when I was very young. I literally just married after I graduated from high school. I married and had children and lived in the Bay Area for a number of years and then went through a divorce. I then remarried to my husband who I have been married to for the last 37 years. We have continued living in the Bay Area, where we worked.

I was a community college counselor at Mission College in Santa Clara. Both my husband and I worked our way through college, both of us had families, were working and went to school at night. Ultimately, I went to grad school, got a master’s and found the perfect job for me, which was to work as a counselor at Mission College. We lived there until my husband was ready to retire from Lockheed (Martin) and we moved up to the Auburn area and that was primarily because my Dad was up here and my sisters.

I’ve been very blessed. I’ve had a very happy life.