Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,760
By This is the grave of William O’Dwyer.
Born in 1890 in Bohola, County Mayo, Ireland, O’Dwyer was able to get an education in Ireland. He attended St. Nathy’s College in County Roscommon. This was all before the Easter Uprising and I don’t see much evidence O’Dwyer was involved in that stuff. He was studying for the priesthood at a university in Salamanca, Spain, but decided that wasn’t the life for him. Instead he migrated to New York in 1910. He got a job just as a regular grunt laborer, but he had that education and wanted more. He ended up with the NYPD for awhile (an Irish cop, what?), and used that to put himself through Fordham Law. As a cop, he shot a guy in 1916 after the guy’s son said he was going to kill his mother; he then made sure the boy got an education. Supposedly, that incident created in him a lifelong hatred of guns. Plus one of his brothers was shot to death in a Brooklyn bar. He got that law degree in 1923 and started his own practice. He did well. He worked out of Brooklyn and then became a judge.
O’Dwyer became somewhat famous after winning election as the District Attorney in Kings County District Attorney because he went after an organized crime syndicate known as Murder Inc., which is what brought Thomas Dewey to power. O’Dwyer was happy to ride that train as well and he was ambitious too. It was said that the murder of his brother really set him off and gave him the energy to take on people who would kill. He decided to take on Fiorello LaGuardia in 1941, but c’mon, he wasn’t going to win that race. And he didn’t. But he was a plugger. He quickly moved on and joined the Army, reaching the rank of brigadier general. That happened due to a successful investigation of corruption in Army Air Force contracts. Robert Patterson, Undersecretary of War, wrote, “Bill O’Dwyer, I firmly believe, has done more than anyone else to prevent fraud and scandal for the Army Air Forces.” O’Dwyer was a member of the Allied Commission for Italy and became executive director of the War Refugee Board. Now, O’Dwyer didn’t resign from his position at District Attorney for any of this. He simply took leave. So he ran for reelection from Europe in 1943 and won.
By 1945, O’Dwyer was a big deal. Tammany was completely on board with him running for mayor again. LaGuardia’s popularity had slipped and reading the tea leaves, the long-time mayor decided against a fourth term. So O’Dwyer won the office with ease. This was a big time in New York. First, he created the Office of City Construction Coordinator and had Robert Moses appointed there. Moses was already Park Commissioner and remaking the city and so this was the next step. He also worked hard to get the United Nations building constructed there, a point I always thought odd, given American hostility to so many countries, in the Cold War but to the present. Always thought it made more sense in Switzerland where so much of the rest of the UN is located. Anyway, it’s there. He also raised the subway fare from 5 cents from 10 cents, which was controversial but necessary. He was a big supporter of Israel and created the city’s first Israel Day parade, working with the large Jewish community who were generally good Tammany folks too. His wife died in 1946 and he remarried a woman 26 years younger than himself, which people surely commented on, but mostly it seems to have given him a glamour that this small man did not have in his own personality.
O’Dwyer won reelection in 1949, but……well, let’s just say a Tammany man has certain connections. He might have been famous for helping to bust Murder, Inc., but he was no shrinking violet when it came to crime connections. The new Kings County DA found some sketchy stuff with police corruption that led up to O’Dwyer and he just bailed. There was illegal gambling involved for sure. World War II had actually helped the mafia, as the nation was reliant on anyone who could provide goods and that allowed openings for organized crime. So the mafia had tighter connections to New York City governance after the war than before and O’Dwyer evidently made his peace with that. O’Dwyer than went after his former protege in Kings County, putting public pressure on him. But then the commander of the 4th Precinct in Brooklyn committed suicide when the DA called him to testify and that was kind of it for O’Dwyer, who knew that he was in trouble. As it turns out, he had been meeting regularly with the gangster Frank Costello going back to at least 1941. He resigned while he was on top, in 1950. In fact, he was given a ticker tape parade on Broadway.
Harry Truman had a nice opening for O’Dwyer as ambassador to Mexico. In truth no one really knows why Truman gave him this position, as they didn’t really know each other except in passing and that passing was mostly O’Dwyer having telegrammed Truman to not run for election in 1948 in order to give Democrats a chance. As Truman was a man known to hold a grudge, it makes his choice to give O’Dwyer a soft landing even more mysterious. It is possible that Truman did this for the benefit of the national Democratic Party; getting O’Dwyer out of the country was one way to keep him hidden from investigators. That’s the thesis of this Smithsonian Magazine article on the issue anyway.
Republicans tried to delay the vote, but the Democratic majority saw it through, and fast. O’Dwyer only remained in that role until shortly after the 1952 election, when of course Eisenhower was going to name his own people. Mostly, he was known for throwing huge parties for any American in the country. Also, the day he resigned, his wife left him. But he stayed in Mexico until 1960. Finally, in 1957, he did have to deal with some consequences, with an order to pay $10,000 in back taxes, but he never suffered any real consequences for his corruption.
O’Dwyer came back to New York after his time in Mexico, mostly going back to his law work, and died there in 1964, at the age of 74, of heart failure.
William O’Dwyer is buried on the confiscated lands of the traitor Lee, Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia.
If you would like this series to visit other ambassadors to Mexico, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. George Messersmith, ambassador during World War II, is in Lewes, Delaware. Francis White, who was ambassador during Eisenhower’s first term before becoming ambassador to Sweden in the second term, is in Baltimore. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.