The following stories come from the Kickstart newsletter: kickstartyourlife.com.

In the days of prohibition, Al Capone was the kingpin
mobster. Nothing could touch him. The law was unable to
make anything stick.

One of the reasons for Al's invincibility was his
lawyer - a very clever, but unprincipled man known as
Easy Eddie.

Eddie always got Al Capone off, and the rewards he got
were magnificent: a massive salary, a huge house,
servants. He lived the lifestyle of a prince because he
closed his mind to the drugs, booze, prostitution,
murders and racketing that his boss was involved in.

This carried on for some time, but eventually a crack
appeared in Eddie's armor. He had a son. Eddie realized
that he could provided wealth and power to hand on to
his son, he could even teach the boy right from wrong,
but the one thing his lifestyle couldn't pass on was a
good name.

Eddie brooded about this and the more he thought about
it the more he believed that his son deserved better.
He deserved to be set an example that even a man as
morally corrupt as Eddie had been could change.

Eddie took the matter into his own hands and in an
astonishing act of bravery, testified against the mob
to the authorities.

Within a year, Al Capone's men exacted their
retribution. Easy Eddie died in a hail of bullets that
took away his life.

But those bullets couldn't take away his final gift to
his son - the knowledge that his father was a good man
who had done the right thing, and had paid the ultimate
price for it.

The second story involves a completely different act of
heroism.

Early in the War in the Pacific, in WWII, a squadron of
planes took off on a mission from their aircraft
carrier.

After flying for a while, one pilot, Butch O'Hare,
looked down at his dials and realized that the
maintenance crew had forgotten to fill up his bird with
gas. He signaled his squadron leader and was ordered
to return to the carrier - no point in flying a mission
if you don't have the fuel to get home.

On his way back, he saw a whole squadron of Japanese
dive-bombers en-route to his convoy of ships.

He was too far from his planes to bring them back and
too far from his ship to warn them, so he reacted in
the only way he knew how. He single-handedly attacked
the Japanese planes.

He flew at them from above, guns blazing. He flew up at
them from below. When his ammunition was all gone, he
continued to attack them using his own aircraft as a
weapon - clipping wings and tails.

Eventually, the Japanese were in such disarray that
they turned back to base.

When Butch arrived at his aircraft carrier and
explained what happened he was given a hero's welcome,
but when the film in the gun camera on his tail was
developed it showed that he had single-handedly brought
down five enemy aircraft - and damaged a lot more.

Butch O'Hare died in action later in the War, and even
though he had received the highest military honors his
home town felt that this true hero should be honored in
a more lasting way: they named their airport after him.

So next time you are travelling through Chicago's
O'Hare Airport, remember a very brave man who knew
right from wrong, and knew only too well the importance
of doing what is right at whatever personal cost.

Butch O'Hare was Easy Eddie's son.