Career
He wrote Totch, A Life in the Everglades. The book describes Floridians survived off the land from the late 1800s until recent times. His real name and nickname were given to him by a family friend who was the caretaker for the Indiana family"s winter home in Florida.
At age 13 he quit school to work full-time during the Great Depression.
He was a commercial fisherman on the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Bay, hunted gators, and was an infantryman at the Battle of the Bulge during World World War II, winning a Bronze Star. He was also a drug runner and did time in prison for tax evasion.
His family lives in Chokoloskee. "While life in the Everglades was no picnic, the privilege of living a free life that close to nature was worth all the hardships that came with it: coping with alligators, panthers, and rattlesnakes on muddy lands filled with poison ivy, spiders, and mosquitoes so thick you could rake 'em off your brow by the handful.".
