Labor
Frank Fitzsimmons
1908–1981 · Teamsters president (1971–1981)
Detroit truck driver and Jimmy Hoffa loyalist from Local 299 who ran the Teamsters while Hoffa was in prison and then kept the presidency.
- Born
Jeannette, Pennsylvania- Died
San Diego, California
aged 73- Birth name
- Frank Edward Fitzsimmons
- Detroit years
- 1924–1960s
- Field
- Labor
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Frank Fitzsimmons moved with his family from Pennsylvania to Detroit in 1924, at 16. When his father died a year later he dropped out of high school to work in an automobile hardware store, then drove buses and, from 1935, trucks in Detroit. He joined Teamsters Local 299 and became one of Jimmy Hoffa's most loyal lieutenants as Hoffa built the local into a regional power base; Fitzsimmons rose to vice president of the local, secretary-treasurer of the Michigan Conference of Teamsters in 1949 and vice president of Detroit's Teamsters Joint Council 43 in 1959. When Hoffa went to prison in 1967, he chose Fitzsimmons as acting general president, expecting a caretaker. Instead Fitzsimmons consolidated his own position, won the presidency in 1971 after Hoffa resigned, and cultivated close ties to President Richard Nixon, whose commutation of Hoffa's sentence barred him from union office. The rivalry between the two Detroit men was unresolved when Hoffa vanished in 1975. Fitzsimmons led the union until his death in 1981.
Highlights
- Truck driver and Local 299 member in Detroit from the 1930s
- Acting Teamsters president from 1967, president 1971–1981
- Close ally of President Richard Nixon
- Longtime Hoffa loyalist who became his rival