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He was born the son of a tough coal prospector in Brazil, Ind., who tested the quality of coal by biting into the ore. When Jimmy was four, John Hoffa died with a coating of coal dust on his lungs. Viola Riddle Hoffa, mother of two girls and two boys, was as tough as her husband. Says Jimmy's brother Bill: "She was always telling us, and she made us listen, that Dad always kept his word . . . We had rules in our house. If your mother or father told you to do something, you did it. And they only told you once. The second time it meant a swat across the mouth." To this day, one of Jimmy Hoffa's proudest boasts—confirmed by people who deal with him—is that he always keeps his word.
To support her family, Viola Hoffa went to work, tirelessly washing and ironing the laundry that her two boys hauled home in a wagon. When Jimmy was about ten, the family moved 20 miles northwest to Clinton, on the Wabash River. The boys chopped and sold wood, set out trotlines in the river, caught catfish, bass, suckers; some were sold, the rest were eaten at home. They scraped the bottom of the Wabash for mussels, boiled them in big oil drums, sold the shells to button makers at the rate of $6 a ton. They learned how to take care of themselves and to get what they could, any way they could.
When Mrs. Hoffa took her children to Detroit's two-fisted southwest side, the boys continued their endless search for a buck. One day they would haul ashes; the next would bring a handsome $2 for passing out handbills (patent-medicine ads) to workers at the Ford River Rouge plant. Soon afterward, Jimmy, who was later to lecture at Harvard, quit Neinas School after the ninth grade.
It was a tough life. Brother Bill took the crime road: felonious assault (1938), violation of probation (1940), carrying concealed weapons (1942). Today Bill Hoffa is a business agent for Teamster Local 614 in Pontiac, Mich.
Berries & Bruises. Ambitious Jimmy Hoffa, a smarter boy, hardened his muscles on a series of jobs, most of them part-time, until at 18 he hoisted himself into steady work in Detroit with the Kroger grocery chain. The job: unloading boxcars at 32¢ an hour. Jimmy and his co-workers got paid only for actual hours worked, though they had to stay close by the loading platforms for 12 to 15 hours a day. In 1932 Jimmy organized a strike. Gathering a six-man committee, he made his demands on the management just as a carload of strawberries and cantaloupes arrived at the warehouse. The company, faced with imminent spoilage of the fruit, quickly made peace. "It was only a small raise," says Hoffa, "but they gave us an insurance deal."