"The Clock of Life is wound but once."

The rest of this great story:................

There was a man nick-named "Artful Eddie" who started out as a small-time lawyer in St. Louis. In 1909, he entered into a partnership with an inventor who created a mechanical rabbit for use at dog tracks. As dog racing was still in its early years, this invention caught on quickly. In 1927 the inventor died, and Artful Eddie used his cunning legal skills to cheat the inventor's wife out of the patent rights. He gained total control over the mechanical rabbit.

Pockets bursting with money, he dumped his wife, and took his three kids, including his son, Butch, to Chicago. Like everyone who met the fast talking young lawyer, Al Capone took an immediate liking to Eddie and set him up at a Chicago dog track.

Dog racing was illegal in Illinois, but by tying up the courts with legal challenges for years, Eddie kept the park open. He didn't stop there, though. He used his talents to expand the Capone empire into other dog tracks around the country, and into tax-dodging real estate deals, sham corporations, and political bribes.

While failing as an upstanding citizen, Artful Eddie seemed to be a decent father. As Butch grew, Eddie realized that the life of crime he was living would severely limit his son's chance for something better. So, he made a fateful decision - he would turn Al Capone over to the law.

At the trial, a cop pulled Eddie aside and asked him what compelled him to turn on Capone. Eddie simply said, "I wanted to give my son a chance."

Capone may have been locked away for good, but the mob did not forget.

A couple of years later, on Wednesday, November 8, 1939, as Artful Eddie pulled up to the corner of Ogden and Rockwell in Chicago, two shotgun blasts ended his life. Inside his coat pocket was found a rosary, a crucifix, a religious medallion, and a poem clipped from the newspaper, which 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.

Because of his father's sacrifice and the clearing of his family's name, Eddie's son Butch was able to gain entrance to the US Naval Academy. He graduated with honors and became a naval pilot.

When war was declared with Japan, Butch found himself flying a single-engine Grumman F4F Wildcat fighter over the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific. One day on mission, Butch and his wingman in another Wildcat spotted nine Japanese twin-engine bombers zeroing in on the aircraft carrier Lexington. They formed up to attack, but the second Wildcat's weapons jammed - leaving only Butch between the airborne attackers and the 2,100 men of the USS Lexington.

Butch attacked the greater enemy force head-on, alone, flying straight into their formation, with guns blazing. One by one, he picked off the enemy bombers, downing five of the original nine attackers. Three more were shot down by Lexington pilots who were able to take off because of Butch's heroic engagement. The last Japanese bomber, badly damaged in the shootout with Butch, crashed at sea miles away.

Butch's heroism was quickly recognized. He became the first naval aviator of World War II to be personally awarded the Medal of Honor by President Roosevelt, who called his performance "one of the most daring, if not THE most daring, single action in the history of combat aviation."

Several years later, Butch's fighter was shot down and he was lost at sea.

There is hardly a day or week that goes by, that the people of Chicago, and probably the nation, don't say, hear or visit his namesake. Because, after the war, the citizens of Chicago named their new airport after their fallen son, ............Butch O'Hare.

    Butch O'Hare

I DO love that story.