Word: hoffa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa was serving a 13-year term in Lewisburg penitentiary for fraud and jury tampering, some of his friends claimed that he wanted a parole not to resume his rambunctious union ways but simply to lead a quiet life-"teaching and lecturing," as New Hampshire Publisher William Loeb put it. The parole board quite clearly did not believe...
...Hoffa became a model prisoner, dutifully stuffing mattresses and keeping in shape by doing pushups. "He has an excellent mental attitude," the prison warden said. "He gives us most courteous treatment and we give him the same." The parole board still did not budge on his case...
...Hoffa then made the ultimate sacrifice. He stepped down as president of the Teamsters in the summer of 1971, throwing his support to sleepy, sluggish Frank Fitzsimmons. Fitz handily won the election at the Teamsters convention in Miami Beach that same summer, and Hoffa became "General President Emeritus" for life, with a consoling pension that he quickly converted into a lump-sum payment worth some $1.7 million...
Open Door. A humble servant to Hoffa all through his labor life, a man whom AFL-CIO President George Meany had called a puppet, Fitz suddenly leaned back in Jimmy's big white chair in the Teamsters' marble palace in Washington and decided that he liked the feel of the job. More important, President Nixon liked Fitz in the job. Seeking labor support for his reelection, the President dropped by a Teamsters executive board meeting in Miami Beach that June of 1971 to pay his respects to the new boss personally. Said Nixon: "My door is always open...
...good-will gesture to the Teamsters, Nixon commuted Hoffa's sentence in December 1971-almost six months after Fitz took over-but only on one condition: Hoffa could not "engage in the direct or indirect management of any labor organization" until March...