No More String

In his decade-long duel with the Justice Department, Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa, 54, was tried six times and convicted twice, but he managed to avoid imprisonment while his lawyers strung out one appeal after another. Last week, as the Supreme Court turned down Hoffa's appeal of a 1964 jury-tampering conviction for the second time in three months, it looked as if the string had finally run out. Scarcely 48 hours after the court announced its decision, Federal Judge Frank Wilson ordered Hoffa to appear this week in Chattanooga, Tenn., site of the jury-tampering trial, to begin serving an eight-year prison term. Though Hoffa's resourceful lawyers were expected to seek still another delay, even they were losing heart. Asked if he could keep Jimmy out of jail much longer, one of them replied: "I doubt it."

Hoffa apparently had some doubt too. Less than an hour before the imprisonment order came through, he announced in Baltimore that Teamster General Vice President Frank Fitzsimmons, 58, would take over the 1,800,000-man union in the event of his own "absence." A onetime bus driver and dockworker, the portly Fitzsimmons has an avuncular appearance that belies his 31-year career as a Teamster organizer, mostly with Hoffa's tough home local, No. 299, in Detroit.

Fitzsimmons' first job will be to negotiate a new contract with the nation's trucking industry before the present one expires on March 31. It would be the first major trucking contract negotiated without Hoffa since 1958, when former President Dave Beck was jailed for embezzling union funds and Jimmy replaced him. It could be a long way from the last. In addition to his eight-year sentence for jury tampering, Hoffa faces a five-year jail term for trying to steal more than $1,000,000 in Teamster pension funds, a conviction that is still being appealed through the courts. He will have one consolation. In jail or out, he will continue to draw his $100,000-a-year salary.

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