Bad, Bad Ed O'Hare
The speckles in the
Pacific night sky were bombers. Nine twin-engine Japanese bombers, in
formation, on course to their target: the aircraft carrier
Lexington. Butch O'Hare could see them all clearly from the cockpit of
his Grumman Wildcat F4F. He was their lone-wolf pursuer, tagging along in
the darkness. If he did not seize the opportunity now to attack from the
rear, his home base, the carrier Lexington, would be obliterated--sent to the
ocean floor in fragments of twisted steel. So Butch gripped the controls,
palms sweating in anticipation of what he knew he must do. The engine
roared and the Wildcat lunged for its prey. Before it was over, five of
the nine Japanese bombers had been dumped into the Pacific. Butch was
ripping away at a sixth when he ran out of ammunition . . . and his comrades
arrived to finish the job. That was February 29, 1942, and the daring of
Lieutenant Commander Edward Henry "Butch" O'Hare . . . the Navy's
number-one World War II ace, the first naval aviator to ever win the
Congressional Medal of Honor. A year later, Butch went down in aerial
combat. But his home towners would not allow the memory of that heroic
accomplishment to die. So the next time you fly into Chicago's O'Hare
International Airport, you'll know for whom it was named, and why. What
you don't yet know is that you'll be passing through a shrine . . . a monument
to a very special kind of love . . .
…and that's THE
REST OF THE STORY.
Chicago. The
roaring Twenties. The time and territory of gangster Al Capone. And
of all the Capone cronies . . . of all the unsavory soldiers who served in that
army of crime . . . only one earned the nickname "Artful
Eddie." Eddie was the fast lawyer's fast lawyer. Through his
loopholes walked the most glamorous rogues in the gallery of gangland. In
1923, Eddie himself was indicted on an illegal booze deal, two hundred thousand
dollars' worth, but he won his own reversal. Later, Al Capone picked up
Eddie and put him in charge of the dog tracks nationwide. You see, Eddie
had already swiped the patent on the mechanical rabbit. Pretty soon
Artful Eddie, as the Capone syndicate representative, became known as the
undisputed czar of illegal dog racing. Nothing could have been easier to
rig in favor of the mob. Eight dogs running . . . overfeed seven . . . it
was as simple as that. In no time, Artful Eddie became a wealthy
man. Then, one day, for no apparent reason, Eddie squealed on
Capone. He wanted to go straight, he told the authorities. What did
they want to know? The authorities were understandably skeptical.
Why should Artful Eddie, the pride of the underworld, seek to undermine his own
carefully constructed dog-track empire? Didn't Eddie know what it meant .
. . to rat on the mob? He knew. Then, what was the deal? What
could he possibly hope to gain from aiding the government that he didn't
already have? Eddie had money. Eddie had power. Eddie had the
pledged security of the one and only Al Capone. What was the hitch?
That's when Artful Eddie revealed the hitch. There was only one thing
that really mattered to him. He'd spent his life among the disreputable
and despicable. After all was said and done, there was only one who
deserved a break. His son. So Eddie squealed . . . and the mob
remembered . . . and in time, two shotgun blasts would silence him forever.
Eddie never lived to see his dream come true. But it did. For as he cleansed
the family name of the underworld stain, his son became acceptable to . . . was
accepted by . . . Annapolis. He became the flying ace who downed five
bombers and went on to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. So the next
time you fly into Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, remember Butch O'Hare
. . . and his daddy, Edward J. "Artful Eddie," the crook who one day
went mysteriously straight . . . and paid with his own life for his son's
chance to make good.
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