{"id":287,"date":"2020-11-04T20:44:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-05T01:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=287"},"modified":"2020-12-07T20:53:38","modified_gmt":"2020-12-08T01:53:38","slug":"profiles-in-courage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2020\/11\/04\/profiles-in-courage\/","title":{"rendered":"Profiles in Courage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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There are different kinds of courage.

That was on display within the same Chicago family in the 1930s and 40s. 

Less than three months after Japan\u2019s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor brought America into World War II, the U.S. fleet was maneuvering near the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific.

On February 20, 1942, the aircraft carrier Lexington<\/em> successfully fought off an aerial raid by five Japanese bombers.  Then lookouts on the \u201cLady Lex\u201d spotted a second wave of enemy aircraft.  This time there were nine bombers.  Only two U.S. fighters were airborne. 

One was an F4F Wildcat piloted by Edward H. \u201cButch\u201d O\u2019Hare.  O\u2019Hare, an exceptional marksman, flew straight toward the V-shaped formation two miles above the sea.

On his first pass he brought down three bombers.  The second time around he destroyed two more.  The remaining Japanese planes scattered.  The entire engagement had taken about four minutes, and O\u2019Hare, incredibly, had fired only 60 rounds of ammunition.  He was singlehandedly credited with saving the Lexington<\/em> and hundreds of lives. 

The young pilot shrugged.  It was what he was trained to do. 

But America was badly in need of heroes in the early days of the war.  President Franklin Roosevelt awarded him the Congressional Medal of Honor, declaring his action to be \u201cone of the most daring, if not the most daring, single action in the history of combat aviation.\u201d

Just a year later O\u2019Hare died in aerial combat over the Pacific.  Chicago honored him in 1949 by attaching his name to one of the busiest airports in the world.

But it’s conceivable that something else in Chicago could have been named for another O\u2019Hare \u2013 Butch\u2019s father Eddie.

Throughout the 1920s, \u201cArtful Eddie\u201d was a key player in Chicago\u2019s crime syndicate.  As Al Capone\u2019s lawyer and the proprietor of numerous racetracks (he helped popularize the mechanical rabbit that paced the greyhounds), he made millions for the mob. 

Artful Eddie was no saint.  But his conscience was burdened concerning his teenage son Butch, who had his heart set on attending the U.S. Naval Academy.  Eddie knew that Butch would never be granted admission unless he made a clear break from Capone.

So he did. 

He volunteered to risk his life by turning state\u2019s evidence against America\u2019s most notorious crime boss.

Remember that wild scene in the 1987 film The Untouchables<\/em>, where Kevin Costner\u2019s Eliot Ness and his partner bravely commandeer the mob\u2019s bookkeeper in the train station?  Pure Hollywood.  It was Eddie O\u2019Hare who turned in the bookkeeper to IRS agents, which led to Capone\u2019s arrest for tax fraud.

Remember the dramatic moment in the movie where Ness learns that Capone\u2019s jury has been bribed, and the judge switches juries to assure a fair trial?  In the real world that was O\u2019Hare yet again.  Costner might play a hero on the screen, but Eddie was the one who took the risk of revealing to prosecutors that the fix was in.  Capone was ultimately convicted and sent to Alcatraz in 1933.

A few months later, Butch O\u2019Hare was granted admission to the Naval Academy.  Artful Eddie\u2019s actions had helped fulfill his son\u2019s dream.

They also cost him his life. 

In 1939, traveling home from the racetrack, he was gunned down behind the wheel of his car.  The crime was never solved.  But few doubted that the mob had ordered the hit. 

Eddie O\u2019Hare\u2019s story is proof that it\u2019s never too late to leave a different legacy.

Do you yearn to repurpose your life?  It doesn\u2019t just happen.  It requires intention.  And resolve. 

And courage<\/em>. 

That might mean the courage to fly against insurmountable odds over the Pacific, or the courage to execute an ethical U-turn.  

No matter what the consequences<\/em>, I will walk this new path.<\/em>

Sometime in the future, something resembling normal air travel will resume.

During one of those inevitable winter weather delays in O\u2019Hare Airport, may the Spirit gently prompt us to ponder our own paths. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are different kinds of courage. That was on display within the same Chicago family in the 1930s and 40s.  Less than three months after Japan\u2019s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor brought America into World War II, the U.S. fleet was maneuvering near the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific. On February 20, 1942, the aircraft carrier Lexington successfully fought… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[94,95,3],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-courage","tag-ethics","tag-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}