Last November, we wrote of the life and death of Dion O’Banion, Chicago’s famed florist – and mobster. A correspondent and descendant residing in the southeastern U.S. has written to question whether O’Banion was indeed both a Roman Catholic and son of a recent Irish immigrant.
Charles Dean O’Banion, commonly known as ‘Dion,’ has extensive coverage on the internet – even his own website at
www.DeanOBanion.com as well, inevitably, at the ubiquitous Wikipedia. All agree that he was born 8 July 1892 to Irish Catholic parents in Aurora, Illinois. His father, a plasterer and house painter from Ireland, moved to Chicago after his wife died while his son was still a boy. There, Dion spent four years as a chorus boy at the Holy Name Cathedral before becoming involved in Chicago’s street gangs.
After he was shot to death in his florist’s shop on 10 November 1924, he was buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery, Hillside, Illinois, in unconsecrated ground at the specific order of Cardinal Maundeleins. Despite this, Father Malloy, remembering his former choirboy knelt at his graveside reciting the litany, three Hail Marys and the Lord’s Prayer. Thanks to pressure from his family, O’Banion was later reburied in consecrated ground at the same cemetery.
An excellent account of the era and not a little on O’Banion himself may be found in the pages of John Kobler’s
Capone: The Life and World of Al Capone (1972, New York). This biography has received attention from those enthusiasts seeking more information on the prominent Irish mobster and Roman Catholic.
It only remains for this writer to remark that upon researching his own family tree he was astonished by the fungus therein. And like most trees, an extensive root system remained concealed beneath the surface.
