Capone Mob Murder, World War II Hero

Their tickets and their luggage tags read ORD. They come by the thousands, hour after hour, day after day, flying into the concrete and steel and glass monster that's never quite finished, that's always under construction, always expanding, always overflowing. Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, even in the midst of a major recession, remains The World's Busiest, as O'Hare boosters never tire of telling us. And it is pretty busy. Ask the people who get lost there. Ask the homeowners in Des Plaines or Bensenville who live beneath the glide paths. Ask the cabbies who scratch out a living hauling warm bodies and their luggage to and from. Back in the days when Super Mobster Alphonse Capone was losing control of his sprawling criminal empire and was preparing for his trip to Alcatraz on an income tax evasion conviction, a much smaller version of the airport, then known as Orchard Depot, was just beginning to spread its wings. In those days, most travelers took the train, and international travelers went by ship. And anyway, Chicago's big airport was Municipal, out on the South Side - now known as Midway.Then as now, you had to really love flying to want to fly into or out of ORD.In 1949, six years after he went down near Tarawa Island in the South Pacific, Orchard Depot was renamed O'Hare International Airport, in memory of Navy Lt. Cmdr. Edward Henry (Butch) O'Hare.Butch O'Hare, born in St. Louis and raised on Chicago's South Side, was the affable, charming, pleasant-faced son of Edward J. O'Hare, wheeler-dealer millionaire lawyer, federal informant and partner-in-crime of Scarface Al Capone. CONT...