It all started in Chicago during Al Capone’s days. Butch’s father, known as “Easy Eddie”, was part of the
corruption that overwhelmed Chicago during the 1920’s and 30’s. He was a lawyer turned booker and Al
Capone’s friend and personal accountant.
In other words, this man knew all the secrets. 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 but had reservations concerning Capone’s racket.
Eddie also had a son named Edwin, and the one and only thing this father wanted for his son was to escape the gangster life style, to make something of himself that would make the family proud.
When Al Capone went to trial on tax evasion in 1931, it was Easy Eddie who decided he had seen enough corruption and testified against Capone and sent him to prison.
Everyone knew it was a death sentence, and sure enough, Easy Eddie was found face down in an alley, shot to death. In his pocket was a crumbled slip of paper that 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.”
Edwin, or Butch, was in military school, and won an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. He was fascinated by flying, and was learning to take off and land in tricky ocean winds when he got word that his father had been shot to death, just a few days before Al Capone was released from prison in 1939.
Then came the war. Like a lot of young men in uniform, Butch took on grave responsibilities in the days following Pearl Harbor; he became leader of a flight squadron. On Feb. 20, 1942, Butch’s fighter was alone, separated from his squadron, in the air when a wave of nine Japanese bombers swooped down on the USS Lexington.
As the Medal of Honor citation read: ”Without hesitation, alone and unaided, he repeatedly attacked this enemy formation, at close range in the face of intense combined machine gun and cannon fire … one of the most daring, if not the most daring, single action in the history of combat aviation.”
President Roosevelt personally congratulated Butch for his Medal of Honor.
But Butch also knew that men he flew with still risked their lives, so he asked to go back to war. On the night of Nov. 26, 1943, Butch led one of the first-ever nighttime fighter missions launched from an aircraft carrier. A Japanese bomber fired at him from behind, his plane hit the ocean in the darkness, and to this day the aircraft of Lt. Cmdr. Edward “Butch” O’Hare has not been found.
His home town would not allow the memory of this WWII hero to fade and today O’Hare Airport in Chicago is named in tribute to the courage of this great man