O'Hare: a Tale of Retribution and Redemption
His father died a mobster's death. He died a war hero and became an airport's namesake
The story can be understood two ways. (1) Mob lawyer E. J. O’Hare provided evidence which put Al Capone behind bars in order to save himself from the penitentiary or (2) he did so to restore his family’s reputation and to save the son he dearly loved from suffering shame.
Edgar Joseph “Easy Eddie” O’Hare was from St. Louis, He became a wealthy Chicago lawyer and met Al Capone, then went to work for him in a legal capacity. Capone made sure that Easy Eddie (also E. J.) was paid big money. He partnered with Capone in numerous illegal dealings and worked to keep Capone and his gang members out of prison.
Capone was the most notorious gangster in American history whose career was marked by being outwardly kind and charitable while simultaneously directing such criminal behaviors as prostitution, murder, bootlegging, gambling and numerous other rackets. He ordered the grisly deaths of three Sicilian mobsters who had turned on him, carried out with a baseball bat by Tony Accardo whom Capone then gave the nickname “Joey Batters”.
Eddie O’hare was in the midst of this sordid activity and very close to the man who orchestrated it. He stayed there while accumulating a large fortune, thanks to good old Al, who saw to it that Eddie’s house was as big as a city block and had all the luxuries and ameneties he could want.
It all blew up for Eddie on February 14, 1929. On that day seven bootlegging members of “Bugs” Moran’s North Side Gang were lined up against a wall in a Chicago garage and shot to death with machine guns by four men, two dressed as policemen. It became known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the bloodiest mob hit of all time. Eddie realized that he could not tolerate living a life in crime any longer and resolved to bring it to a close.
He would turn over evidence of Capone’s tax fraud to Federal agents. That would ultimately be the one thing which wound up sending Capone to prison.
Perhaps the main fact leading to this decision was that Eddie had a son he loved very much and realized that his criminal life had long distanced him from the boy, now a grown man and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.
Regardless of how one interprets the story, the fact is that the instant Eddie O’Hare reached over and picked up the telephone to call that federal agent, he had to know for certain that he was signing his own death warrant. Capone was in federal prison but still had the ability to contact accomplices on the outside. And, just a week before he left prison, that’s what he did.
In November, 1939, While Butch was in flight training at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, FL, he learned that his father had been shot to death in Chicago. Two men had pulled alongside Eddie’s car and fired shotguns loaded with deer slugs at point-blank range.
Butch, now a Navy lieutenant and pilot, was with his newly-wedded wife in Hawaii, on December 8, 1941, the day after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. He was called to duty that day. By January 31, he was aboard the carrrier, USS Lexington when he and fellow pilots scrambled to intercept a formation of Japanese fighter-bombers on their way to attack their ship. O’Hare located the attackers soon after launching and made four passes at the enemy, shooting down three of them within about five minutes, stopping his attack only when he ran out of ammunition.
While approaching the carrier, O’Hare was accidentally fired upon by one of the anti-aircraft gunners. After landing, O’Hare approached the gravely embarrassed gunner who had fired at his plane and told him “son, if you don’t stop shooting at me when I’ve got my wheels down I’m gonna have to report you to the gunnery officer.”
After shooting down a total of five enemy bombers, O’Hare became an ace and was promoted to lieutenant commander. He became the first naval aviator to receive the Medal of Honor.
After the ceremony, O’Hare was described as “modest, inarticulate, humorous, terribly nice and more than a little embarrassed by the whole thing.”
Ensign Edward Feightner, who served with O’Hare in 1942, later said that one of the best pieces of information he ever received was from Butch O’Hare.
“If you ever jump one of these Zeros and you surprise him, remember, the first thing he’s gonna do is a loop. Don’t follow him into it! By the time you go into it a second time, he’ll be behind you. The first thing you should do when he starts the loop is to make a hard right turn and keep turning. You’ll come right around and when he bottoms out of the loop, you’ll be right on his tail.”
I suppose most of us shudder at the thought of actually landing a plane on a carrier or doing air combat with other pilots who are trying to kill you. My friend, Tom Kopel, flew a jet fighter in combat over Vietnam and had to land that monster on the deck of a rising, falling and tilting landing strip which was too narrow to allow for any lateral movement. I get nightmares reflecting on ferris wheels and state with full confidence that Butch O’Hare deserved his medal even if he never shot anybody down. But that’s just me.
Chicago’s O’Hare field handles roughly 4,800 flights each day. Of the millions of passsengers who go through that airport every year, it’s doubtful that more than a handful are aware of the man who gave it that name.
Maybe “Easy Eddie” would feel justly proud of that son.
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