Happy Birthday, Jimmy

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 him.

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 to President Fitzsimmons."

As a 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 6, 1980.

After this "favor" to Jimmy, Fitz led the Teamsters into a formal endorsement of Nixon for President last year. Nixon nominated him to the board of

COMSAT. Mrs. Fitzsimmons was put on the board of an advisory committee at the Kennedy Center. When all the other labor leaders walked off the President's Pay Board, Fitz stayed on. And when Nixon dropped Labor Secretary James Hodgson, Fitz was immediately called and offered the job. He declined.

Hoffa's probation ends next month, and he is now hoping that the legal restrictions on his union activities will be dropped, either by presidential pardon or by a direct challenge in court. If he succeeds, he might easily win back the Teamsters presidency, and that prospect does not particularly please either Fitz or the Nixon Administration. Said one labor observer: "Hoffa is too unpredictable."

This week Hoffa is 60 years old --his birthday falls on Valentine's Day --so the boys decided to give him a large party. They rented the huge Latin Casino outside Camden, N.J., and sent out 2,000 invitations. Fitz sent his regrets, saying that he had a prior commitment in California. And none of the other 16 members of the national executive board showed up either. But the middle-echelon Teamsters packed the house. Looking tanned and as fit as ever, Hoffa bounced out of a red Cadillac with his wife Jo, obviously enjoying the movie-premiere spectacle of TV lights and photographers. He disclaimed any rift with his "old friend Fitz," but when asked by a news reporter if the restriction on his release amounted to a doublecross, Hoffa said, "Nobody knows what happened, but it wasn't part of the papers I signed in prison...I probably would have been out in 1974 with the extra good time." His chief ambition right now, he said, was to "be able to speak out again about the injustices to the little people of America."

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