James J. Metcalfe - Early Life and FBI Career

Early Life and FBI Career

Metcalfe was born in Berlin, Germany and emigrated to the United States as a boy. His mother was a concert pianist, He was educated at Notre Dame, and obtained a law degree from Loyola University. Soon after completing law school, Metcalfe joined the FBI's Chicago Bureau, where he participated in operations against several Midwestern gangsters, including Ma Barker, Pretty Boy Floyd, and John Dillinger. Metcalfe was among the agents who ambushed Dillinger outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago, resulting in Dillinger's death.

In later years, after achieving fame as a nationally-syndicated poet, Metcalfe wrote a poem in tribute to those who served with him during the FBI's early years, entitled "We Were the G-Men:"

We were the vaunted G-men once...we did our little bit.
Where now, we could not qualify...to be a part of it.
...
For now the FBI is not the group it used to be...
It is the model of success and of true efficiency.
...
We had to learn the hard way then the things we did not know...
And as we took our chances great, we helped the Bureau grow.
...
We suffered heartaches and we lost the lives of several men,
But surely every one of us would do that job again.
...
Because today the FBI is worthy of its name...
And we are proud and happy that we helped create its fame.

Read more about this topic:  James J. Metcalfe

Famous quotes containing the words early, life, fbi and/or career:

    “The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
    —David Elkind (20th century)

    “The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world.” Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental.”
    —Max Weber (1864–1920)

    “Has anyone ever told you that you overplay your various roles rather severely, Mr. Kaplan? First you’re the outraged Madison Avenue man who claims he’s been mistaken for someone else. Then you play the fugitive from justice, supposedly trying to clear his name of a crime he knows he didn’t commit. And now you play the peevish lover stung by jealously and betrayal. It seems to me you fellows could stand a little less training from the FBI and a little more from the Actors Studio.”
    —Ernest Lehman (b.1920)

    “Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
    —Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)