Early Life
Frank Fitzsimmons was born in April 1908, in Jeannette, Pennsylvania, to Frank and Ida May Fitzsimmons. His father was a brewer who moved the family to Detroit, Michigan, in 1924 when Frank was 16. His father died of a heart attack when Fitzsimmons was 17 years old, and Frank dropped out of high school to support his family by working in an automobile hardware store. In 1932, he got a job as a bus driver in Detroit, Michigan, and New York City before becoming a truck driver in Detroit in 1935. He joined Teamsters Local 299, and became friendly with the local union's president, Jimmy Hoffa.
Fitzsimmons was elected Local 299 business manager in 1936, Local 299 vice president in 1940, and (at Hoffa's insistence) an international union vice president of the Teamsters in 1961. He was appointed secretary-treasurer of the 80,000-member Michigan Conference of Teamsters in 1949, and vice president of Teamsters Joint Council 43 in Detroit in 1959. During this time, Fitzsimmons became known as "a figure of ridicule" in the Teamsters; he was inarticulate, chubby, passive and easily embarrassed, and Hoffa and others frequently had him make coffee or hold chairs and rarely gave him any authority or duties. Nonetheless, Fitzsimmons was considered an adept manager and a very skilled contract negotiator. Despite Hoffa's many legal problems and the routine emasculation, Fitzsimmons remained the Teamsters president's staunchest supporter.
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