The Biggest Teamster Daddy of Them All

FBI says Hoffa search expected to take 2 weeks

Agents in Mich. look for remains of Teamsters leader who vanished in 1975

The FBI said Thursday that a search of a horse farm for clues to Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance is expected to take at least a couple weeks and likely will involve the removal of a barn.
-- NBC News

With our Teamster Daddy dearly departed, I pause to ponder what he would think of this breaking news of the Teamster legend he simply called "Hoffa".

All the search brings to mind for me is the urgency that T-Daddy packed with when he left to go to Jackie Presser's (President of IBT from 1983 - 1988) funeral in Cleveland during the summer of 1988. I was going into my senior year of college and had finally registered the depth of T-Daddy's Teamster loyalties and all that it could possibly mean. He was working (and networking) out of a Union Hall in the SEC in the same college town I had lived in for three years. I prayed his teamster ties wouldn't be betrayed in the local newspaper. It was the first time I didn't hold the same girlhood adoration and pride for our dad, VP of the Local Teamsters Union and hero, who could beat up anyone else's dad, with one long, muscled arm tied behind his back, probably both.

Today we are three college-educated Teamster Daughters still living in our Teamster father's legend. We found our way to get through college with nothing but bragging rights provided by him. No tuition money, spending money, gas money. "Hard work never hurt anybody" he would say and "the words 'I can't' are not in your vocabulary". He was proud of us, his friends would tell us, but he could never tell us himself these words we desperately needed to hear.

College-bound Teamster Daughters and Sons should be made aware of the James R. Hoffa Memorial Scholarship Fund . It may not have been established back in the day to provide us with much needed college aid, but would have been fun to brag about (and possibly intimidate) to our friends. Long live the memory of these legendary Teamster Daddies.