Hat tip Kokoda
STORY NUMBER ONE
Many Years ago, Al Capone virtually owned Chicago. Capone wasn’t famous for anything heroic. He was notorious for enmeshing the windy city in everything from bootlegged booze and prostitution to murder.
Capone had a lawyer nicknamed “Easy Eddie.” He was Capone’s lawyer for a good reason. Eddie was very good! In fact, Eddie’s skill at legal maneuvering kept Big Al out of jail for a long time.
To show his appreciation, Capone paid him very well.. Not only was the money big, but Eddie got special dividends, as well. For instance, he and his family occupied a fenced-in mansion with live-in help and all of the conveniences of the day. The estate was so large that it filled an entire Chicago City block.
Eddie lived the high life of the Chicago mob and gave little consideration to the atrocity that went on around him.
Eddie did have one soft spot, however. He had a son that he loved dearly. Eddie saw to it that his young son had clothes, cars, and a good education. Nothing was wi thheld. Price was no object.
And, despite his involvement with organized crime, Eddie even tried to teach him right from wrong. Eddie wanted his son to be a better man than he was.
Yet, with all his wealth and influence, there were two things he couldn’t give his son; he couldn’t pass on a good name or a good example.
One day, Easy Eddie reached a difficult decision. Easy Eddie wanted to rectify wrongs he had done.
He decided he would go to the authorities and tell the truth about Al”Scarface” Capone, clean up his tarnished name, and offer his son some resemblance of integrity. To do this, he would have to testify against The Mob, and he knew that the cost would be great. So, he testified.
Within the year, Easy Eddie’s life ended in a blaze of gunfire on a lonely Chicago Street. But in his eyes, he had given his son the greatest gift he had to offer, at the greatest price he could ever pay.. Police removed from his pockets a rosary, a crucifix, a religious medallion, and a poem clipped from a magazine.
The poem read:
“The clock of life is wound but once, and no man has the power to tell just when the hands will stop, at late or early hour. Now is the only time you own. Live, love, toil with a will. Place no faith in time. For the clock may soon be still.”
STORY NUMBER TWO
World War II produced many heroes. One such man was Lieutenant Commander Butch O’Hare.
He was a fighter pilot assigned to the aircraft carrier Lexington in the South Pacific.
One day his entire squadron was sent on a mission. After he was airborne, he looked at his fuel gauge and realized that someone had forgotten to top off his fuel tank.
He would not have enough fuel to complete his mission and get back to his ship.
His flight leader told him to return to the carrier. Reluctantly, he dropped out of formation and headed back to the fleet.
As he was returning to the mother ship, he saw something that turned his blood cold; a squadron of Japanese aircraft was speeding its way toward the American-fleet.
The American fighters were gone on a sortie, and the fleet was all but defenseless. He couldn’t reach his squadron and bring them back in time to save the fleet. Nor could he warn the fleet of the approaching danger. There was only one thing to do. He must somehow divert them from the fleet.
Laying aside all thoughts of personal safety, he dove into the formation of Japanese planes. Wing-mounted 50 caliber’s blazed as he charged in, attacking one surprised enemy plane and then another. Butch wove in and out of the now broken formation and fired at as many planes as possible until all his ammunition was finally spent.
Undaunted, he continued the assault. He dove at the planes, trying to clip a wing or tail in hopes of damaging as many enemy planes as possible, rendering them unfit to fly.
Finally, the exasperated Japanese squadron took off in another direction.
Deeply relieved, Butch O’Hare and his tattered fighter limped back to the carrier.
Upon arrival, he reported in and related the event surrounding his return.. The film from the gun-camera mounted on his plane told the tale. It showed the extent of Butch’s daring attempt to protect his fleet. He had, in fact, destroyed five enemy aircraft. This took place on February 20, 1942, and for that action Butch became the Navy’s first Ace of W.W.II, and the first Naval Aviator to win the Medal of Honor.
A Year later Butch was killed in aerial combat at the age of 29. His hometown would not allow the memory of this WW II hero to fade, and today, O’Hare airport in Chicago is named in tribute to the courage of this great man.
So, the next time you find yourself at O’Hare International, give some thought to visiting Butch’s memoria l displaying his statue and his Medal of Honor. It’s located between Terminals 1 and 2.
SO WHAT DO THESE TWO STORIES HAVE TO DO WITH EACH OTHER?
Butch O’Hare was “Easy Eddie’s” son.
A shiver went up my spine. Thanks for a story I will pass on to all of my good Chi Town friends.
Sometimes you just gotta do, what ya gotta do. I’d love to hear what the kid thought about his old man.
A great story to start my day.
Bravo Kokoda
That was the kind of story that a novelist couldn’t come up with at their peak. God wrote that narrative.
Wonderful way to start my day.
Despite the flaws of the mob, if you paid your protection money, they protected you unlike the police. And they didn’t fuck with your kids unlike the gangs of today.
From the Daily Sheeple:
10. The mafia has a sense of honor. If they say they’ll do something, they’ll do it.
9. The mafia code-of-conduct is simple and clear, and unfettered by legal doublespeak and millions of regulations.
8. When competing mafia families go to war they don’t kill thousands of civilians as collateral damage. War is the health of the state but for the mafia it’s bad for business.
7. Instead of conducting the war on drugs and [on] the American people, the mafia is perfectly happy to peacefully provide high quality products to those who desire them.
6. When you buy protection from the mafia, you get protection. When you buy protection from the state you can dial 9-1-1 and die.
5. The mafia’s protection is much less expensive than the state’s. The mafia wants 10% – 15% of your profits, and the various levels of government want at least 40% to 50% of your profits.
4. Unlike the state, the mafia actually wants your business to succeed. They know that ruining your business means that you can’t pay for protection. The mafia imposes almost no regulatory overhead, nor do they require that you waste your time filling out zillions of self-incriminating tax forms.
3. The mafia won’t keep you from having a gun to protect yourself and your family. The state prefers that you be disarmed. The mafia will gladly sell you the means to protect yourself – and they won’t bother with a Brady check either.
2. The state wants to regulate what you do in your bedroom. The mafia will gladly sell you whatever you need to enhance your enjoyment.
1. Members of the mafia have a great sense of style, dress far better than government bureaucrats and are much easier on the eyes.
My Father In Law worked at the Packard dealership that many of the wise guys used. He said they dressed like a million dollars, were funny and tipped well.
Interestingly, he was around the corner from the St. Valentines Day Massacre and was one of the first people outside the building that day. Decided to go to college after that and graduated from Northwestern.
Smoke
Except there is no honour among thieves.
Like you say the only difference between mafia and government is the wise guys live by an unwritten code while the government on the other hand enshrines laws in books. Then raises statues to praise their idols.
Now that I think about it. Maybe you are right..
One other difference between the Mafia and the Gummint:
When the Mafia breaks your leg, they don’t tell you it was a service provided for your own good.
I vaguely knew O’Hare was named for a war hero but did not know the ‘rest of the story’. In 1942 it was unlikely many people would have realized just how ‘famous’ airport names would become and many are better known by their FAA acronyms as only venerated presidents can have their names tacked on to these landmarks. Good that we have an O’Hare and not an Al Capone airport in Chicago.
Not to worry. Soon I’m sure they’ll take O’Hare’s name off the airport and substitute Angelou.
We need more stories that make sense and teach us life can have meaning.
That was a classic “Paul Harvey” type of story. Many thanks for sharing.
“Good Day”
Very cool story.
Thanks! Great way to start the day.
O’hare was an idiot. It was his job to check his fuel. His ass would have been grass if he had not spotted the Japs. Probably thought dying was better than court marshal.
Count on Llpoh to find a black cloud in a silver lining.
Too funny I was thinking the same thing. Lloph is right though. I’m guessing that tidbit didn’t make it to the movie version of that myth. I wonder where I have heard that before….
Admin – what can I say. It is a gift.
I love the way llpoh just gets right down to brass fucking tacks! Give it to ’em once…….with a sledgehammer and move on! NEXT!
I’m not as well practiced as our resident injun but I tend to be the same way. The best thing about it is that it tends to keep the morons away and management tends to leave you alone. 🙂
IS
We can rely on you to give a concise synopsis. Tell the story. Read yesterday that Vin Scully is leaving his job as announcer of Dodgers baseball games come October. You and Lloph should apply for the job. It would be must see TV and radio.
You would be getting to the point.
Lloph would be bashing it into the ground.
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Nope! One reason I refuse to watch sports is because they never just shut the fuck up! Not even for a few seconds. Dead air time just scares them to death.
I remember being at a friends place one day while he was watching a football game. There was a lull in the game for some reason and one of the commentators started talking about underwear. I excused myself and left! Years back, just about the time I quit watching NASCAR, the broadcaster actually had a brilliant idea they called Crank It Up where they just shut the hell up for minute or two and let you hear the engines and the cars as they roared past a microphone. It certainly wasn’t as good as being there live but 33,600 horse power makes a very appealing sound.
It certainly wasn’t as good as being there live but 33,600 horse power makes a very appealing sound.
Deplorable.
Why wasn’t O’Hara able to radio the fleet? The story says he wasn’t able to warn them or his squadron.
Most aircraft in WW II had very short range radios. When contacting air traffic control you would not want to scream a 500 watt signal that could be triangulated. A couple of aircraft in the flight would have had a long range unit but it looks like he was not one of them.
Thank you for the great story. Butch O’Hare is the type of man that made America great. Unfortunately, we now live in a time during which men who think they are women are recognized for “courage” as opposed to war heroes who lose limbs in the field of battle.
Modern Chronicler-
So the type of man that makes America great:
– fucks up so bad it should have killed him (notice he did not keep his little fuel problem to himself)
– gets a pass on his fuck up (sent home instead of made to fly on into cerain death)
– gets luckier than a two peckered goat by stumbling onto a bunch of Japs he did not know was there and was not looking for
– fights them as an alternative to court marshal
– again gets luckier than a two peckered goat again and survives again
– Hero!
So, basically, you are saying the people who made America Great were basically incompetent, lucky as shit, had no plan whatsoever, but brave as hell.
Ok, got it.
Fuck that shit. America was made great by men and women of vision. Washington, Franklin, etc. are the types I refer to.
America was killed off by incompetent assholes that got lucky. Obama, Bush, Clinton.
O’Hare was brave. But assholes like him get killed, and take you along with.
LLPOH is correct, it was his responsibility to check his fuel level. I think that his actions in the aftermath of his error more than make-up for his failure. Anyone can screw up, but it is a rare soul that will use that opportunity to turn their life around and make a difference in this world.
I like the son story.
The dad was a fucking piece of shit. NOT because he was in the mob. But, because he was in the mob, and then ratted then out . A snitch. A traitor. A turncoat. He could have just walked away, but noooo, he turned into a treasonous rat. All traitors deserve death.
We just had our primaries for the Governor race the other day and one of the Republicans named Edelblut was running a commercial about how when he was an accountant for a firm that asked him to fudge the books, he went to the Feds and turned them in and was “left with no a job”.
I told my kids that he took as a point of pride his lawful adherence to tax law, but that treachery to his employer was a sign of his lack of honor. It cost him the nomination, I’m sure of it, but I bet he still thinks of himself as upright in that case.
There’s a fine line that one has to walk when it comes to legality versus honor. It’s up to each man to make that call, but you cannot expect everyone to side with you just because you’ve chosen one master over another.
Regardless of whether you agree with the current tax laws or not I don’t see Edelblut’s act as a lack of honor. His boss was telling him to do something that wasn’t in his job description and would get him put in jail if he was caught. You think the bosses wouldn’t have hung him out to dry if he had followed their orders and cooked the books and gotten caught? Honor that isn’t reciprocated is just stupidity.
We don’t know what harm would have been done to other people (vs other companies or the govt) by the company cooking the books. Maybe nothing. Maybe a whole lot. We don’t know what the company would have done to him if he just quit rather than cooking the books. I’d have to know a lot more about the story before I would express an opinion of whether going to the feds was better than just walking away, but I think that either is better than blindly following orders.
I voted for Edelblut.
Why not just resign? I wouldn’t want to work for anyone asking me to do something illegal.
Not sure how his actions could be construed as a lack of honor. Unless you’re referring to “honor among thieves”?
If you see someone being robbed and you turn a blind eye and don’t help or at least call for help, that would be honorable? Maybe a simplistic analogy…
Llpoh, true but sometimes the pre-flight has to be rushed and such a mistake can happen. If radio silence was ordered, that would have been the time to disobey an order. If he attacked torpedo and dive bombers, he had a big advantage. Wish he’d been sent home to be an Ace recruiter for a year and survived the war but Great story.
Yeah, but how did rushing the pre-flight turn out for lynyrd skynyrd?
Why rush a pre-flight if it will get you killed? Who does that help?
Rhs – my understanding is that the pilot has/had absolute authority to abort the mission at any time if he is not satisfied with the aircraft – no questions asked.
SSS can probably confirm or clarify this. It is that absolute authority which means if you screw up and leave without fuel, it is entirely on you and your ass is toast.
Great storys to start my day. Thank You! I wonder if Obama has read or knows about this great american hero. I did not. (dumb Canadian). So sad that out of millions of people only a few stand out as Butch O`Hare.
As a veteran of Naval Aviation and 3 three cruises on 2 Navy Aircraft carriers as a plane captain and troubleshooter…. I can tell you this…. NOT everything on a plane that gets used and abused like the Navy planes works as it should.
I didn’t know O’Hare International had such a history…
I saw something about a year ago that infuriated me to the bone on the way to the San Diego Airport…..aka Lindburgh Field…
The huge painting of Charles Lindburgh has been painted over….. how dare they…
Sometimes, things work out in strange ways regardless of how they got that way.
Muck
A wonderful story about the power of redemption.
Ratting out corruption and evil is a noble, redeeming act, regardless of how deep into it you previously were. Many of us have praised Snowden for doing it — why be so hard on Easy Eddie?
DO THE RIGHT THING THE RIGHT WAY FOR THE RIGHT REASONS. It’s never too late to make a positive difference.
“(Butch) O’hare was an idiot. It was his job to check his fuel. His ass would have been grass if he had not spotted the Japs. Probably thought dying was better than court marshal (sic).”
—-Llpoh
It’s martial, not marshal, dumbass. More importantly, are you kidding me? Have you ever flown ONE SECOND of combat? Do you have the faintest fucking idea of what it’s like? I do. 600 hours worth. Shit gets fucked up now and again. Humans in the ground crew, humans in the cockpit. The guy was deservedly a Medal of Honor winner. Deservedly. And Butch O’Hare fucking died IN COMBAT a year later. I want to shout as loud as I can in your stupid face, “HE DIED IN COMBAT.”
Now tell us again what your point is, Llpoh. Trying to stir shit? Your comment wasn’t anything but gross ignorance and misjudgment. You fucking failed, chief. Big time. But you’ll never admit you stepped on your dick, will you?
The one time LLPOH was ever wrong was the time that he mistakenly thought he was wrong.
SSS – how many times did you not check your fuel, and take off without enough? That would be never. Otherwise your ass would have been in a sling, and you may well never have flown again. You know it, and I know it.
The pilot is soley responsible for his fuel. The article tries to blame “someone” else for the issue. What horseshit.
That dumbass O’Hare took off without enough fuel. He endangered his life, the life of those flying with him, the mission, and the aircraft itself. He would have been screwed upon his return. Am I wrong?
That he turned that pile of manure into a victory was pure dumb luck, enabled by his bravery.
He died in combat. We honor that. That has nothing to do with the fact that he was an obvious imbecile, brave though he might have been.
BTW – all I know of O’Hare was the story above. Was any of it true? Did he take off without fuel? If so he was an imbecile. But it has the ring of fable to it.
”The dad (of Butch O’Hare) was a fucking piece of shit. NOT because he was in the mob. But, because he was in the mob, and then ratted then out . A snitch. A traitor. A turncoat. He could have just walked away, but noooo, he turned into a treasonous rat. All traitors deserve death.”
—-Stucky
Probably the worst, most hypocritical comment on TBP ever. O’Hare’s dad DIED in a hail of gunfire in 1939, probably from Capone’s hired killers (not proven). Would Stucky say that about Rudolf Hess, who defected from the Nazis early in WWII? Snowden? Stucky sits on his omerta, to what I’m not sure.
Ratting on a criminal organization is not a crime, whether it’s the mob, the Nazis or the USG. I’m beginning to believe the self-appointed “Big Dogs” on this site are getting a little long in the tooth and a little short on judgment.
SSS – amongst the worst judgment shown around here was you saying the FBI would recommend Clinton be indicted. That was naive.
I admire that you cling to faith in certain institutions, and their members, but unfortunately that faith is likely unfounded anymore.
Honest and patriotic souls such as yourself, and I mean that truly, are going to be disappointed going forward. There will be too few of you, and too many of them that disappoint you.
And yes, I did post it to stir up the monkeys. Doesn’t mean it is not or was not true, based on the story. But I knew it would inflame the masses. Always worthwhile, that.
@ Llpoh, who said (with my comments in parens):
“SSS – amongst the worst judgment shown around here was you saying the FBI would recommend Clinton be indicted. That was naïve (correct, but it was based on nearly 43 years of experience in dealing with classified information and 10 years of experience in working with the FBI).
I admire that you cling to faith in certain institutions (that’s gone, dead, buried), and their members, but unfortunately that faith is likely unfounded anymore (correct).
Honest and patriotic souls such as yourself, and I mean that truly, are going to be disappointed going forward (no kidding). There will be too few of you, and too many of them that disappoint you (not anymore; James Comey’s statement on July 5th was the straw that broke the camel’s back).”
SSS – that is enormously sad.
When those such as you can see no spark of goodness and honor left in the institutions of the nation, we are in desperate times indeed. I hope you are right re there being many more like you springing forth. God speed, SSS.