Going to School

Going to School is the book’s understated expression for Jimmy Hoffa’s entry into prison. Its significance lies in the contrast it makes possible: imprisonment is described as a journey to school, yet the account that follows shows legal confinement, violence outside the prison, and Hoffa’s continuing effort to influence the union from a distance. The phrase marks a change in his circumstances, not a clean break from the relationships and power struggles surrounding him.

The phrase and the journey

The chapter heading Going to School gives an ordinary educational phrase an ominous meaning. In Frank Sheeran’s recollection, the night before Jimmy Hoffa went to school, Sheeran drove from Wilmington to Washington, D.C., to see him. Hoffa gave him $25,000 for the lawyers representing Johnny Sullivan and two other men indicted over the shooting of John Gorey and Rita at the union hall. The sequence places the phrase at a threshold: Hoffa was about to enter prison, but his attention was still on a legal defense connected to violence in Philadelphia.

Sheeran’s account complicates the stated explanation for Gorey’s killing. Gorey belonged to The Voice, and the FBI, Sheeran says, attributed the killing to his being a rebel. Sheeran counters that Gorey was not a leading figure in the organization and argues that, if the motive had been to punish its leadership, Charlie Meyers would have been a more significant target. He also disputes the premise that there was corruption to expose, saying that everyone already knew about it. These details matter to the expression’s context: “school” does not separate Hoffa from the violent and contested world he is leaving behind. The money for the lawyers continues to move through that world even as he approaches prison.

Prison as an institution

The book identifies the destination as Federal Correctional Institution, Lewisburg, where Hoffa entered on March 7, 1967. His arrival involved the routine procedures of delousing, photographing, fingerprinting, and being outfitted in blue denim. The prosaic intake details stand against the grander metaphor of school: this was not an initiation into a new sphere of freedom, but a physical and administrative confinement.

The restrictions were substantial. Prisoners were allowed three hours of monthly visits from approved nonlawyers, with the list limited to family members; they had no telephone privileges, and could write to only seven approved relatives or lawyers. Letters in both directions were screened. Union officers could neither visit nor write to Hoffa. His son, a union lawyer, could see him as often as once a week because he qualified as a lawyer rather than as an ordinary family visitor. The phrase therefore carries an irony: the man going to “school” could not freely communicate with the organization whose leadership remained central to his life.

Hoffa’s imprisonment did not prevent contact through active legal cases. Appeals in the Chicago case were still pending when he arrived, and he could seek a parole hearing after two and a half years, in November 1969. Lawyers who visited him included Frank Ragano, who consulted with him and carried messages to union and mob figures; Morris Shenker, who worked on parole strategy and the delicate effort to obtain a presidential pardon; and Bill Bufalino, who regularly visited as lawyer and adviser. The prison’s rules thus restricted ordinary contact while leaving consequential channels open to a man with legal resources and a wide network.

The network outside the walls

The phrase also sits beside Sheeran’s own arrest, shortly after Hoffa went to prison. Big Bobby Marino traveled to Washington to seek bail money from Fitz for Sheeran, but Fitz refused. Sheeran remained in the Philadelphia Detention Center for four months, until a judge allowed him to sign his own bail. After his release, Fitz also turned down Sheeran’s request for expenses. Sheeran then called Russell Bufalino, whose intervention secured thirty-five from Fitz, left for him at the Market Inn.

The Market Inn’s role gives this exchange a concrete, clandestine setting. Sheeran describes it as both a dry spot, where money could be hidden, and a drop spot, where a package could be left with the maître d’ for someone else to collect. The money was concealed in a system built around intermediaries and discretion. In this account, “school” is not the only euphemistic language: ordinary places and transactions acquire specialized meanings within the network. Hoffa’s imprisonment coincided with a test of who would provide assistance, who would exploit another man’s vulnerability, and whose calls still had force.

Release without a return to freedom

After Hoffa got out, the first year brought its own restrictions. He needed permission to travel and was barred from union conferences. Yet he could receive permission to go to California or elsewhere for another reason, stay at the same hotel as union figures, and encounter them in the lobby. Sheeran characterizes these encounters as opportunities for Hoffa to lecture and teach. Hoffa also campaigned under the table and worked the telephone, keeping supporters in line and reminding them that he intended to return so they would not be tempted to side with Fitz.

The later account changes the force of Going to School. Prison interrupts Hoffa’s direct command, but the expression does not describe a completed transfer of power or an inward transformation. Legal visits, message-carrying, discreet financial help, hotel encounters, and telephone campaigning connect the stages before and after confinement. The title’s mildness is therefore double-edged: it makes imprisonment sound almost routine while the surrounding episodes reveal its costs, the limits imposed on Hoffa, and the persistence of the struggle beyond the prison walls.