Personality
Nelson was the antithesis of popular, Robin Hood-like gangsters of the Depression era, which included Dillinger. A hot-tempered man, Nelson did not hesitate to kill lawmen and innocent bystanders alike. For example, in the March 6, 1934 robbery of the Security National Bank & Trust Company in Sioux Falls, Nelson was enraged by the sound of the alarm, demanding to know who set the alarm off, setting him apart from Dillinger and Van Meter, who continued working to the alarm as if it hadn't gone off. Upon seeing a motorcycle cop, Hale Keith, pull up alongside the bank, Nelson leaped onto a railing and fired a deafening burst through a plate glass window, striking Keith four times and severely wounding him. He reportedly screamed "I got one!" after shooting Keith.
One of the high profile outlaws of that era, Nelson and Clyde Barrow were accused of killing more than 50 police officers between them. Paradoxically, Nelson was also a devoted family man who often had his wife and children with him while running from the law. After Dillinger's death in July 1934, Nelson became Public Enemy Number One.
Read more about this topic: Baby Face Nelson
Famous quotes containing the word personality:
“Unable to create a meaningful life for itself, the personality takes its own revenge: from the lower depths comes a regressive form of spontaneity: raw animality forms a counterpoise to the meaningless stimuli and the vicarious life to which the ordinary man is conditioned. Getting spiritual nourishment from this chaos of events, sensations, and devious interpretations is the equivalent of trying to pick through a garbage pile for food.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“The monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less than himself, not less of a person, but more of a person, more truly and perfectly himself: for his personality and individuality are perfected in their true order, the spiritual, interior order, of union with God, the principle of all perfection.”
—Thomas Merton (1915–1968)
“But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)