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, early, life, fbi and/or career:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“The girl must early be impressed with the idea that she is to be “a hand, not a mouth”; a worker, and not a drone, in the great hive of human activity. Like the boy, she must be taught to look forward to a life of self-dependence, and early prepare herself for some trade or profession.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“When you realize how hard it is to know the truth about yourself, you understand that even the most exhaustive and well-meaning autobiography, determined to tell the truth, represents, at best, a guess. There have been times in my life when I felt incredibly happy. Life was full. I seemed productive. Then I thought,”Am I really happy or am I merely masking a deep depression with frantic activity?” If I don’t know such basic things about myself, who does?”
—Phyllis Rose (b. 1942)
“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)
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)