Roy Exum: 'Easy Eddie' & Butch - The Chattanoogan

Maybe the whole thing started on the sofa. Somebody spied the 12-year-old Butch O’Hare lounging on the sofa one summer’s day, munching down some bonbons – of all things --- and ‘Easy Eddie’ got word of it. Eddie was divorced from Butch’s mom and came up hard. When first married, he and his 19-year-old wife lived above this family’s grocery store in St. Louis. This was when Eddie slaved over legal books during the Great Depression, going to law school at night, and passing the Missouri Bar. But when he and his wife split, Eddie went to Chicago and took his three kids with him.

As an enterprising kind of guy, he made friends easily and his first break came when Owen P. Smith, the commissioner of the International Greyhound Racing Commission, hired the lawyer O’Hare to obtain a patient on a mechanical ‘rabbit,’ that the greyhounds would chase (It is still used at dog tracks to this day.)  That was a lucrative deal for Eddie. Word got around “Easy Eddie” was a good lawyer, one who knew his way around, you know.

So soon Eddie was doing deals with well-heeled guys, straight and crooked, the gangster Al Capone among them. Al was high on Eddie, which meant the Chicago mafia was, too. Soon Eddie and Al owned dog tracks in Miami, Chicago, and Boston. Easy Eddie was smart, to boot, and became president of the Sportsman’s Park horse park. When the inventor Smith passed away, Eddie bought the patent right to the ‘rabbit’ from his widow.

He represented a bunch of “unsavory,” tacking down big courtroom wins for the mob but darned if that boy of his was going to lie on the sofa eating bonbons! “Easy Eddie” had the boy shipped to Western Military Academy “on the 12-month plan”. Butch knew his dad had immense power in Chicago and forbade Butch to come to Chicago for any reason. Still, Butch had the last word … “Yes sir.” Butch thrived at the military school, was intensely popular and equally successful. With the Drums of War increasingly loud, Butch wanted to go to the Naval Academy

About this time, Eddie was tired “of who he was” and realized it might be hard for an Illinois Congressman to sponsor his son … because of Eddie’s widely known antics. So ‘Easy Eddie’ calls an old friend, a newspaper reporter named John Rogers in St. Louis. Rogers, in a sly way, puts ‘Easy Eddie’ in a clandestine contract with the IRS and, according to many chapters of lore, Eddie swapped Capone’s ‘Achilles Heel’ – tax evasion – for Butch’s appointment to Annapolis.

Understand, Al Capone did far worse but ‘tax evasion’ was all the government could easily prove.

Years later, a former cop turned historian – Ed Burke -- said without ‘Easy Eddie’ providing a rash of evidence, the Feds wouldn’t have had the info to convict Al Capone, who was found guilty and sent to the famed prison Alcatraz from August 1933 to January 1939. About one week prior to Capone’s release, a pair of hit men pulled alongside Eddie O’Hare’s car and turned it, and its occupant, into Swiss cheese. Yes, no arrests were ever made.

In 1932, Butch was enrolled in United States Naval Academy, and this brings us up to the Memorial Day part of the story.

In February 1949, the USS Lexington was attacked near Papaul, and a flight of fighters went to intercept the attack. Butch O’Hare was held back on the flight deck in case a second wave materialized and – sure enough – a ragged ‘V’ was found on the radar. O’Hare was sent aloft … alone … and used approximately 60 rounds of ammunition per intruder as he downed five Japanese bombers and seriously wounded a sixth whose mission it was to bomb the carrier Lexington.

His superior “fight-manship” was a marvel. Upon landing on the carrier, his fuel tanks were nearly dry, and his ammo was gone but he had become the first Navy “ace” (five-kills,) the first Navy officer to be awarded the Medal of Honor, and a wildly acclaimed celebrity. He was brought stateside where 60.000 lined the streets of St. Louis to honor their favorite son. He participated the several War Bond tours but soon the draw of combat enthralled Butch.

He was teaching young pilots in Hawaii when he once tutored:

“If you ever jump one of these Zeros and you surprise him, remember, the first thing he's going to 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 up 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!" O'Hare also related "First of all, remember, in today's world, whenever you take off and engage the enemy, you're going to be outnumbered. If you want to survive this war, you have to look behind you every chance you get. Even when you pull the trigger, be sure to look behind because there's gonna be someone back there.”

* * *

And then came Nov. 26, 1943. In a nighttime attack O’Hare was apparently caught in a crossfire and was downed near the Gilbert Islands.. Every effort that was made to recover the plane and/or the pilot was unsuccessful. But Butch, who wouldn’t allow his subordinates to call him anything but Butch, was indeed a true war hero and, in 1949, he was regarded as a hero of such renown Chicago’s Orchard Depot Airport was blessed with the name of O’Hare International Airport.

* * *

It is said that every patriot should set our clock radio to 3 p.m. today, where you are meant to sponsor whatever music to say your own blessing for America’s fallen.

Take as much time as you need.

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Roy Exum: 'Easy Eddie' & Butch - The Chattanoogan
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