A graduate of Cambridge High School and Ohio Wesleyan University, he was the son of Frank Dollison, an editor of newspaper The Daily Jeffersonian.
[1] Dollison graduated from the university in 1933, and because of the Great Depression only found part-time work until 1938, when he became a guard at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.
During his term as Associate Warden, the iconic June 1962 dummy mask escape from Alcatraz occurred.
Mr. Dollison was transferred to a Texas federal prison in December 1962 because Alcatraz was closing and retired three years later.
Although some of her source material included her father's papers, her books are also informed by interviews and prison documents.