UpDate - Vol. 11, No. 3, Page 7
September 19, 1991
Book describes Hoffa as bright, naive, ruthless

     It's 1962 and Art Sloane, a Harvard graduate student in search
of a doctoral topic, has just met the infamous president of the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Jimmy Hoffa.
     What begins as a half-hour interview arranged by Sloane's
industrial relations professor, a friend of Hoffa's, turns into
three hours and lunch. Sloane is captivated by Hoffa-his dynamic
presence, his agile mind, the contrast between his capacity for
kindness and explosions of temper. He senses the roughhewn Hoffa is
"destined to achieve," and asks Hoffa if he can focus his
dissertation on the Teamsters and on its leader. He wants to shadow
Hoffa for the next eight months. He wants to know what it takes to
run the largest labor union in the nation.
     Hoffa agrees.
     "He was exciting to be around. He was very bright and cynical
but at the same time, could be surprisingly naive. He felt that if
he told what he thought was the truth, it would be reported that
way," Sloane said.
     Hoffa, Sloane's recently released biography, is a by-product
of that association and three years of intensive research, which
includes conversations with Hoffa's family, friends and associates.
     "Hoffa's children and some of his old friends were
particularly generous with their time and information," Sloane
said.
     Both Hoffa's son and daughter asked to read Sloane's doctoral
dissertation before agreeing to be interviewed. But once they read
it, Sloane said they were very "open and receptive."
     It was Hoffa's daughter, Barbara Hoffa Crancer, who told
Sloane about an incident which seems to contradict Hoffa's image as
a ruthless tyrant with a monumental temper.
     Hoffa had taken his son and daughter fishing. Barbara, who was
14 years old at the time, was casting when her hook caught the
senior Hoffa squarely on the lid of his right eye.He managed to get
them back to shore, drive himself 26 miles to the hospital and have
the hook removed, all the while reassuring her that he knew she was
sorry for what had happened. Crancer told Sloane, "He just didn't
want me to feel bad or stupid."
     In a recent review, Publishers Weekly called the book "a
searching and eminently fair biography of one of America's...most
controversial labor leaders."
     Published by MIT Press this summer, Hoffa, traces the
legendary union mogul's life from birth to presumed death.
     Sloane writes, "James R. Hoffa's entrance into the world-on
February 14, 1913, in Brazil, Ind.-contained its own element of
color. The sole practitioner in that small central-western Indiana
town had consistently maintained during Viola Riddle Hoffa's
pregnancy that the swelling in her abdomen was a tumor...."
     Hoffa began organizing for the Teamsters when he was 18 and
worked on the loading dock for the Kroger food chain. He was so
good at it that within one year he was hired by the Teamsters as a
full-time organizer.
     According to Sloane, "William Crow, one of his earliest
recruits, said: 'He stood right close up to you and looked right at
you. His face was, well, open. He was the sincere-est little guy
I've ever seen. He gave me confidence. Up to then I'd been scared
to join a union but Jimmy made me feel that it was just the right
thing to do.'"
     "He really feared nothing," Sloane said. Nobody talked back to
Hoffa, not even the trucking industry leaders with whom he
negotiated.
     During the months in which Sloane observed Hoffa, he noticed
that employers "would always call him Mr. Hoffa and he would call
them by their first names."
     They all understood the power he had, Sloane said. He could
strike their companies on just his word and without truckers to
carry its products to market, no company could last more than three
weeks, he said. Even though he often threatened, Hoffa rarely had
to use the strike to get his way.
     Sloane describes Hoffa as fearless, even through years of
testimony before congressional committees and in court, even as he
answered questions about his associations with notorious Mafia
figures and participation in alleged union corruption.
     Ultimately, neither Sloane nor anyone but those with him when
he disappeared know if Hoffa exhibited fear the day he died. Sloane
ends his book with an account of Hoffa's death as described in FBI
records.
     He also examines two other theories. One postulates that Hoffa
died of a heart attack while in a car with Mafia henchmen trying to
frighten him into not running for Teamsters president upon his
release from prison. Hesitant about taking Hoffa to the police,
they simply disposed of the body.
     The other theory, Sloane admits, is confined to one member of
Hoffa's immediate family. It is that Hoffa was killed by order of
Richard Nixon to prevent the labor leader from discovering that
Nixon received a $6 million bribe to prohibit Hoffa from engaging
in union activities as a condition of his pardon.
     Whatever the truth, those who have reviewed the book since it
became available at bookstores have found it fascinating reading.
                                        - Barbara Garrison

Hoffa is scheduled to be reviewed by the New York Times and
Washington Post, Sunday, Sept. 22.