Daly resigned from the United States Military Academy after one year to fight in World War II and was sent to Europe, participating in the D-Day landings at Omaha Beach.

After being presented the Medal of Honor in a ceremony at the White House by President Harry S. Truman, Daly went back to his hometown, started a family, and became a businessman.

Daly was born September 15, 1924, in New York City,[1] but resided his entire life in Fairfield, Connecticut, except for one year he and his wife lived in County Wicklow, Ireland.

After having severe disciplinary problems and continuously being placed on special confinement and walking off punishment tours he resigned his appointment after only one year to fight in World War II.

When a machine gun opened fire at close range, he picked up a dead man's rifle and killed the two-man German crew.

[2] Although still recovering from his wounds, for which he would continue to receive treatment until mid-1946,[4] he attended a ceremony at the White House where President Harry S. Truman formally presented him with the medal.

He worked very briefly as a salesman for an oil company before starting his own manufacturer's representative business, Michael Daly & Associates, in the Southport neighborhood.

[8] A Democrat, he also supported the political careers of his brother, Judge T. F. Gilroy Daly, and friend, town politician John J. Sullivan, but dismissed suggestions to run for office himself.

His brother, T. F. Gilroy Daly, who died in 1996, was a federal judge in Connecticut who had gained prominence as a lawyer for helping win the exoneration of Peter Reilly, who had been convicted of killing his mother in a highly publicized case of the 1970s.

The ceremony included a three-round volley and West Point's bugle sounding "Taps" as preludes to a military helicopter flying over the cemetery.

When blistering machinegun fire caught his unit in an exposed position, he ordered his men to take cover, dashed forward alone, and, as bullets whined about him, shot the 3-man guncrew with his carbine.

Daly is a U.S. Army veteran of World War II who received the Congressional Medal of Honor for extreme heroism while leading his infantry company through the shell-battered, sniper-infested wreckage of Nuremberg, Germany, in April 1945.

He has also provided decades of volunteer service to handicapped children, the Town of Fairfield and served as a member of the Connecticut Judicial Review Council.