Frank Fitzsimmons

Frank Fitzsimmons was Jimmy Hoffa’s longtime ally and the successor Hoffa elevated through the ranks of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. His career embodies a central reversal in Hoffa’s story: the arrangements Hoffa built to retain authority while imprisoned gave Fitzsimmons the institutional position from which he could take control, resist Hoffa’s return, and reshape the union’s leadership around himself.

From Local 299 to International Office

Fitzsimmons came from Hoffa’s Detroit circle, having been his old friend from Local 299. His first major step toward national leadership followed the death of International vice president Owen Bert Brennan, whom Hoffa lost to a heart attack shortly before the 1961 convention. To fill the vacancy, Hoffa chose between Fitzsimmons and Bobby Holmes, a loyal veteran of the early Kroger strike. The choice came down to a coin flip. In the narrator’s later judgment, Holmes would never have betrayed Hoffa as Fitzsimmons eventually did; the coin, in this telling, placed the wrong man on the path to succession.

Hoffa nominated Fitzsimmons at the 1961 convention, and the delegates elected him vice president. Fitzsimmons then took the microphone and praised Hoffa at length, in what the narrator remembers as nearly a pledge of allegiance. The performance made their alliance public, but its later irony is built into the recollection: Fitzsimmons’s advancement depended on Hoffa’s sponsorship, and the man who appeared to affirm his patron would eventually become his rival.

The appointment belonged to a wider contest over the union’s power and resources. Hoffa had secured a national pension fund in 1955, giving Teamsters retirement security beyond Social Security, while also insisting on control over how the fund’s growing assets could be lent. By the time the narrator joined the union, the fund held about $200 million; by the time he retired, it had reached a billion. The book describes the fund as a source of loans to organized crime as well as a vehicle for union-backed development. Fitzsimmons’s rise therefore took place inside an organization whose leadership controlled both a major labor institution and access to substantial financial resources.

A Successor Designed for Hoffa’s Absence

At the July 1966 Teamsters convention in Miami Beach, Hoffa amended the union constitution to create the office of general vice president. The new officer would have the power to run the union if its president went to prison. Hoffa installed Fitzsimmons in that position, regarding him as a dependable subordinate. The design addressed Hoffa’s immediate vulnerability to incarceration, but it also gave Fitzsimmons an official route to the presidency and the authority to govern in Hoffa’s absence.

Hoffa tied the constitutional change to his own financial and legal protections. He raised his annual salary from $75,000 to $100,000 and secured a provision that it would continue if he went to prison. Delegates also approved payment of past legal expenses, which then totaled $1,277,680, and future legal costs regardless of their eventual amount. The convention thus joined succession planning to a broader effort to preserve Hoffa’s position and benefits during imprisonment. The authority given to Fitzsimmons was not a temporary personal favor alone; it was written into the union’s governing structure.

Hoffa’s next opportunity to return depended on parole. His 1969 application was denied while his Chicago conviction remained on appeal. By 1971, parole would potentially release him in time for the July convention, where he expected to win reelection. Fitzsimmons announced early that year that he would run for president if Hoffa did not make parole. The announcement challenged Hoffa directly: Hoffa remained president and, according to the account, the offenses for which he had been convicted did not disqualify him under the Landrum-Griffin Act from holding union office. The executive board declined to endorse Fitzsimmons even conditionally, but the declaration had made the succession dispute explicit.

The Presidency and the Terms of Hoffa’s Release

After Hoffa decided not to seek reelection, Fitzsimmons appeared with Hoffa’s son, James P. Hoffa, at a press conference at the Playboy Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach. He announced that Hoffa had written to say he was not a candidate and was endorsing Fitzsimmons for president. At a June 21, 1971, executive-board meeting, Fitzsimmons told the board that Hoffa had resigned and appointed him acting president until the convention. Richard Nixon then entered the room and sat beside Fitzsimmons as newspaper photographers took pictures. Two days later, James P. Hoffa formally informed the board that his father had resigned from several union posts, including the presidency of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and of Local 299.

The transfer of office coincided with Hoffa’s effort to secure release from prison. On December 23, 1971, Nixon commuted Hoffa’s sentence, enabling his immediate release. The commutation, however, prohibited him from directly or indirectly managing a labor organization before March 6, 1980. The restriction turned Fitzsimmons’s succession into a conflict over whether Hoffa could regain control: Fitzsimmons held the presidency while Hoffa was barred from managing the union. Hoffa’s supporters described the condition as a double-cross, and Hoffa later challenged its legality in court.

Fitzsimmons did not merely occupy the office while Hoffa was away. The account describes him as establishing his own authority as Hoffa sought a route back into union leadership. Hoffa’s plan depended on maintaining a foothold at Local 299: its president, Dave Johnson, was expected to remain in office until Hoffa could return, then appoint him as a business agent and make him a delegate to the 1976 convention. Fitzsimmons pressed Johnson to retire early, which would have allowed Fitzsimmons to install his own son as local president. The pressure coincided with hang-up calls to Johnson, a shotgun blast at his union-hall office window, and the destruction of his forty-five-foot cabin cruiser. The narrator presents these incidents as messages from Fitzsimmons and his allies. Johnson stayed in office and made a deal that gave Fitzsimmons’s son the vice presidency instead.

Open Conflict and Personal Retaliation

By February 1974, Hoffa was openly attacking Fitzsimmons’s performance. He accused him of traveling to golf tournaments rather than treating the presidency as an eighteen-hour-a-day job, and in a television interview called him “crazy” and pointed to his visits to a psychiatrist. Hoffa regularly branded him a liar as their conflict intensified. The insults marked a sharp change from the 1961 convention, when Fitzsimmons had used the microphone to praise the man whose support had made his career.

Fitzsimmons retaliated against members of Hoffa’s family and circle. He fired Josephine Hoffa from her union job, costing her an annual income of $48,000, and ended James P. Hoffa’s $30,000-a-year legal retainer. Chuckie O’Brien, who had grown up in the Hoffa household as a foster son and called Hoffa Dad, kept his Teamsters job while drawing closer to Fitzsimmons and becoming increasingly estranged from Hoffa. Their split widened amid Hoffa’s disapproval of O’Brien’s gambling and spending and his refusal to support O’Brien’s bid for the presidency of Local 299. Fitzsimmons’s control therefore altered not only the union’s formal leadership but also the relationships through which Hoffa had once exercised influence.

Narrative Role and Legacy

Fitzsimmons’s character is presented largely through his changing position in relation to Hoffa: first the loyal appointee at the microphone, then the designated stand-in, and finally the incumbent resisting Hoffa’s return. The account’s sharpest structural irony is that Hoffa’s precautions against imprisonment—creating a powerful general vice presidency and placing Fitzsimmons in it—made the transfer of power possible. The successor was not an outsider who seized the union from nowhere; he was the beneficiary of Hoffa’s own institutional planning.

That reversal also reframes the coin toss of 1961. The narrator treats the choice of Fitzsimmons over Bobby Holmes as a contingent moment with consequences far beyond filling one vacancy, though the later conflict is narrated retrospectively and the claim that Holmes would have acted differently remains the narrator’s judgment. Fitzsimmons’s importance lies in the contrast between personal allegiance and institutional authority: an ally elevated to preserve Hoffa’s rule became the central obstacle to its restoration. By the time Hoffa’s disappearance brought federal attention back to the union’s inner circle, Fitzsimmons remained the president, while the FBI’s list of suspects included Hoffa associates such as Frank Sheeran and Russell Bufalino—not Fitzsimmons. His decisive role in the book is instead the struggle over succession, control, and the limits of Hoffa’s power after prison.