Introduction

But then came the killing shot that was to nail me to the cross.

Edward Grady Partin.

And Life magazine once again was Robert Kenedy’s tool. He figured that, at long last, he was going to dust my ass and he wanted to set the public up to see what a great man he was in getting Hoffa.

Life quoted Walter Sheridan, head of the Get-Hoffa Squad, that Partin was virtually the all-American boy even though he had been in jail “because of a minor domestic problem.”

– Jimmy Hoffa in “Hoffa: The Real Story,” 1975

I’m Jason Partin; I was born on 05 October 1972.

My father is Edward Grady Partin Junior, a public defense attorney and former drug dealer who went to prison during President Reagan’s war on drugs. After being released from prison in 1986 he earned his high-school equivalency diploma, a college degree in history and political science, and law degree. He currently practices law in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

My grandfather was Edward Grady Partin Senior, the Baton Rouge Teamster leader and convicted felon with a list of charges including kidnapping, rape, manslaughter, racketeering, obstructing justice, theft, assault and battery, and perjury. He was famous in the 1960’s and 70’s for being the surprise witness whose testimony sent International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa to prison for jury tampering. We called him Big Daddy.

To protect Big Daddy and my family against inevitable retaliation from Teamsters and Hoffa’s mafia colleagues, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and U.S. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy placed my family under 24 hour federal protection; we were protected from harm and from legal prosecution until Hoffa vanished from a Detroit parking lot on 30 July 1975. Big Daddy was showcased in national news and not a month went by that the Partin name wasn’t front page of Louisiana newspapers for either his crimes or – because he was a local hero – recommendations that he become governor.

In 1983 Big Daddy was portrayed by the ruggedly handsome Brian Dennehy in the film about Hoffa’s battle with the Kennedy’s, Blood Feud; America knew what Big Daddy looked like and could recognize his southern drawl, and the young Brian Dennehy was a close match. He was portrayed in 2019 by the burly Craig Vincent in Martin Scorcese’s opus about Hoffa and the Mafia and probable link to Kennedy’s assassination, The Irishman; to fit Craig’s northeast Italian accent Scorcese changed Big Daddy to Big Eddie Partin.

My mother was Wendy Anne Rothdram, a 16 year old girl who met my 17 year old drug-dealing dad and became Wendy Anne Rothdram Partin; I was born ten months later. I called my mother by her first name until the day she died; to her dying day she quipped that she was born WAR and marrying a Partin WARP’ed her. After she passed I began calling Wendy my mom; to me this story is about how I learned to honor my mother.

My mom passed away a few months before The Irishman was released in theaters. Scorcese’s film was based on a 2014 memoir by a colleague of Big Daddy’s, Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a WWII combat veteran, Teamster leader, and mafia hitman who claimed to have killed Hoffa in a suburban house near the Red Fox restaurant where Hoffa made his final phone call. To squeeze Big Daddy into the epic film Scorcese shrunk his role into five minutes. The Irishman packed theaters, and during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic shutdown it set global streaming records on Netflix. Approximately one Billion people saw a fictionalized version of Big Daddy’s part in history. I never watched it; I spent the pandemic re-contextualizing my mom’s life. I was Wendy’s last living relative and no one but me knew her part in history; I’ve been trying to tell her story in the form of a narrative memoir ever since.

I wrote the first draft during the 2020 to 2021 global shutdown. Writing a truthful narrative was harder than I imagined. This is the current version; like life, it’s a work in progress and prone to error. I appreciate constructive feedback.

This is a coming of age memoir that shares my mom’s history and also tells the story of Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance and President Kennedy’s in four parts; the common links between each part are what was happening with my mother, father, and grandfather while I was growing up.

The first part of this story begins with my conception on 31 December 1971, coincidentally the same day Hoffa was released from prison after President Nixon commuted his sentence. I was just an infant in the 1970’s, so I wrote an introduction that focuses on Big Daddy’s history with Jimmy Hoffa and how my mother ended up living a few streets one of Big Daddy’s houses and met Ed Partin Junior. I begin my narrative when my memories begin forming in 1976 and add news articles aligned with my memories to show how Jimmy Hoffa’s imprisonment and death were linked with my childhood, and how and why I began calling my mother Wendy. This part of the story ends in 1979 with Big Daddy being sentenced to prison.

The second part is a coming of age story set in the 1980’s and begins with Big Daddy going to prison and my custody being split between Wendy and my dad. Big Daddy’s little brother, my great uncle Doug Partin, is now head of the Baton Route Teamsters. My journey begins soon after my father goes to prison the same summer that Big Daddy is released early due to declining health; he returns to Baton Rouge in 1986 and I begin attending Belaire High School and meet Coach Dale Ketelsen, a former Iowa All-American wrestler and Olympian at 126 pounds who started LSU’s team in 1968 and led it to 4th in the nation before the team was disbanded in 1979; Coach had left LSU but remained in Baton Rouge and started a high school program in the underserved and relatively poor Belaire subdivision. I meet him and wrestle under Coach’s guidance for three years. My journey as a wrestler is unequivocally a quest to understand nature versus nurture; it cumulates with the 1990 Baton Rouge city wrestling finals during my senior year and final wrestling match on 03 March 1990, one week before Big Daddy dies.

Going into finals, I’m co-captain of the Belaire Bengals and have lost six matches to Hillary Clinton, the coincidentally named captain of the Capital High Lions (future first-lady Hillary Clinton was still the wife of Arkansas governor Bill Clinton and unknown to us). Hillary was the three-time undefeated time state champion at 145 pounds. Unlike heroes in the movies who win at the end, I’m pinned in the second round and Hillary inadvertently breaks my left ring finger. I attend Big Daddy’s funeral on 11 March 1990 with my two middle fingers buddy taped and a silver medal pinned to my letterman jacket. Greenwood Funeral Home is packed with the entire Baton Rouge police force, the mayor, LSU’s 1954 national champion football team, at least 100 Teamsters, at least three FBI agents we can identify, and countless reporters from most major newspapers, all seeking to know what happened to Hoffa. (I’m listed in those news articles simply as one of Big Daddy’s surviving grandchildren.) I’m only 17 years old but observe all of the adults enamored with Big Daddy and his fame and sense that I’m no longer a kid identified by my family; I stare at my broken finger and see that my identity is more from Coach being Belaire’s co-captain than being born a Partin. My first hero’s journey has ended. With that knowledge, I decide to leave Louisiana and begin another journey in the army.

I graduate high school and become a paratrooper and anti-armor infantryman in the 82nd Airborne Division, famous for having parachuted into Panama and overtaken the government to capture President Noriega over Christmas of 1989-1990 when I was training to wrestling Hillary. (The 82nd Airborne was, and are, the president’s quick-reaction force and on call to deploy anywhere in the world within two hours.) On 03 August 1990 Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait and President Bush sends approximately 8,000 82nd Airborne paratroopers to stop 400,000 Iraqi soldiers and the world’s largest fleet of tanks. Media calls the 82nd’s stance “a line in the sand” and the Bush administration dubs their mission Desert Shield. Six months later 560,000 Allied soldiers stand behind the 82nd Airborne to begin Desert Storm.

My team of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment is on the front line and crosses the border to begin the ground war. On 03 March 1991, exactly one year after Hillary broke my finger, the 504th’s anti-armor company leads the battle for Khamisiyah airport that destroys Saddam’s stockpile of chemical weapons and ends Desert Storm. We follow the credo “First in, last out” and remain in Iraq to protect Allied forces as they leave. On the plane home I stare at my awkwardly healed finger and realize that one hero’s journey blends into another; my high school wrestling team and my final match is now seen as allegory for what happened at Khamisiyah and how small teams train and fight in close combat. I’m on a new team and have a chest full of medals unlike my high school letterman jacket. I return to Baton Rouge after the war to visit Coach then return to serve two more years on the quick reaction force of President Bush Senior.

During the 1992 presidential election Oliver Stone strategically releases the film about President Kennedy’s assassination, JFK, based on the memoir by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison. (Garrison was famous for conducting the only trial for Kennedy’s murder and unsuccessfully trying to indite Big Daddy.) The film implies what many people believed: the CIA and FBI were part of a conspiracy that worked with American mafia leaders to orchestrate President Kennedy’s death. Voters demand that incumbent president Bill Clinton release government files on Kennedy’s murder from the classified 1976 John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Junior Assassination Report; in January of 1993 part of the report is declassified and it details Big Daddy and Hoffa’s plots to kill Bobby Kennedy in 1962, one year before President Kennedy’s assassination matched their plans; I see why Bobby was so intent on punishing Hoffa and protecting the only witness against him.

I begin researching my family’s partin in history using the army’s library and my newly obtained security clearance. I serve on President Clinton’s quick reaction force and the Fort Bragg wrestling team. I grow to 191 pounds and prepare for my final tournament; I stare at that broken finger and reminisce about wrestling the now humorously seen Hillary Clinton when I was only 17 years old and 145 pounds. I step on the mat and, just like the real-world hero story of my high school years, I’m pummeled and loose gloriously to a better wrestler and realize that some outcomes never change regardless of how much you train and the journey is the reward. This part ends with me being honorably discharged from the army.

The third part of this story completes the circle of a hero’s journey: the return home to share knowledge gained while away. I am convinced that nurture overrides nature; my dad’s little brother, my uncle Keith Partin, is now head of the Baton Rouge Teamsters and Jimmy Hoffa Junior is president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. I decide to study engineering at Louisiana State University during the day, spend afternoons as an assistant wrestling coach at Belaire High School under Coach Ketelsen, and work as a paramedic at night so that I can study between emergency calls. A squad of former high school wrestlers and I reunite and restart the LSU wrestling program with Coach’s guidance; they elect me co-president, just as they did in high school, and I reflect on what it means to be a democratically elected leader. College seems easy compared to my military service and researching Kennedy’s life and murder; I use my free time and the nascent internet to learn more about Big Daddy’s role in Hoffa’s imprisonment and Kennedy’s murder and wonder what is in the JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination Report that presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush Senior, and Clinton kept classified (I’d continue this thought for presidents Bush Junior, Obama, Trump in his first term, and Biden; ending during Trump’s second term and the full release in January 2025). Three years later I wrestle my final college match. Coach attends and has been in my corner ever since.

After the match I leave Louisiana for the last time and drive across country with my girlfriend to interview for graduate school in California. Along the way we discuss whether or not to have biologic children; I tell her my family’s history and experiences with nature versus nurture and bring all previous parts of the story to a conclusion. This part ends with our engagement on the night the Hale Bopp commit flies overhead and marks another journey that will this time be shared.

The fourth and final part of the story is centered around my mother’s surprise and untimely death from liver failure in 2019, coincidentally the same summer that Martin Scorcese released his opus about Hoffa, The Irishman. The result of my journeys as a young adult are shown: I had become president of a small company of engineers developing medical devices, head of the University of San Diego’s innovation lab and leader of engineering and entrepreneurship courses, and a Court Appointed Special Advocate for three kids in the San Diego foster system. When I learn Wendy is dying, I see that I was so absorbed with my life that I never made time for her. She’s only 64 years old; she quips that seeing advertisements for The Irishman reminded her that marrying a Partin drove her to drink. She enters a coma.

I fly to Baton Rouge and am by Wendy’s side as she passes on 05 April 2019. I write a simple version of her life for an obituary and decide to begin writing a memoir that tells her whole history. I call her my mom for the first time.

The final part of this story ends with the Covid-19 pandemic and The Irishman becoming the most streamed film in the history of media; almost one Billion people across the globe watch a simplified version of Big Eddie Partin testify against Jimmy Hoffa. I don’t watch it, but I speak with Craig Vincent a few times and he encourages me to write what I remember about Big Daddy. I decide to use my time during the global lockdown to begin what you’re reading now.

For now, I call this memoir A Part in History. It’s dedicated to my mother, Wendy Anne Rothdram Partin; may she rest in peace.

This is the current draft: Go to The Table of Contents