Biography

As a boy growing up in Chisholm, Minnesota, Jim Oberstar was taught the value of hard work. His first job was delivering the Chisholm Free Press newspaper. Later, as a high school student, he worked summer jobs in the iron mines to pay his way through college. On one occasion, Jim recalls that he was studying during a break at the mine, when an older iron miner came up to him and said, "Sonny, better you should study," - advice Jim took to heart.

Jim Oberstar was born September 10th, 1934 to parents whose families had come to America for a better life. His grandfather was an oven maker from Slovenia who had been recruited by the U.S. Steel Company to work on the massive blast furnaces of the steel mills it was building in the Chicago area and later in Duluth’s Morgan Park. When the work was finished he moved to the Iron Range where Jim’s father, Louis was born. Louis was raised on the Range, where he met and married Jim's mother Mary Grillo and began working in the Godfrey Underground Iron Mine, later working in the open pits. Mary worked in the Arrow Shirt Factory in Chisholm to supplement the family income while she raised Jim and his brothers.

The work ethic his family and community inspired in him enabled Jim to graduate Summa Cum Laude from the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul in 1956 with a double major in French and Political Science. From there, he continued his education by winning a scholarship to the College of Europe in Belgium. Following his tenure as a language teacher for over three years in Haiti, Jim returned to the United States to serve Minnesota as an aide to his predecessor in Congress, Rep. John Blatnik.

Shortly after accepting the job with Blatnik, Jim courted and eventually married a co-worker, Jo Garlick. In 1974 when John Blatnik announced his retirement, Jim sought and won his first term in Congress. The people of the Eighth Congressional District have responded to his service by returning him to Washington every two years since.

After 28 years of happy marriage and four children, Jo Oberstar died in 1991, a victim of breast cancer.

Jim began a new chapter in his life in November of 1993 when he married Jean Kurth, a widow with two children, who had also lost her first spouse to cancer.

Between 1995 and 2006, Jim was the senior Democrat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. In recent years, Jim has won numerous victories in the House, including the Safe Routes to School Act, a $200 million program that helps school districts combat childhood obesity by providing money to build biking and walking paths to schools, hire crossing guards, and promote safety programs. He has secured thousands of jobs in his district by providing transportation projects vital to Minnesota’s economy, including a $700,000 grant for Chisholm/Hibbing Airport from the Economic Development Association and $470,000 for the National Scenic Byways Program, "not to just make transportation efficient but more enjoyable," Oberstar said.

Jim has also used his seniority in Congress to provide Federal funding for social programs working toward a better Minnesota, including a nearly half-million dollar grant to Minnesota Program Development Inc.’s Battered Women’s Justice Project (BWJP) to assist the military in addressing the problem of family violence; a $1.5 million grant to the Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency to fund Head Start programs in the region; and a $75,000 grant from the Department of Labor to SOAR Career Solutions, a Duluth-based organization that assists unemployed and underemployed individuals and ex-offenders to help start their own businesses.

Last year, Jim defeated Rod Grams in the 2006 election while Democrats regained control of Congress. On December 7, House Democrats picked Oberstar to chair the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "I look forward to the many challenges ahead for this Committee and am ready to work with Members on both sides of the aisle, and the Administration, to move our agenda forward for the good of all the American people," Oberstar said.

On January 4, 2007, Jim officially became the chairman of the Transportation Committee and immediately got to work on the people’s business: by June, half of the bills passed in the House came from the Transportation Committee - the New Direction Congress was in full-swing. The Transportation Committee had introduced the Water Resources Development Act, which has since passed via veto override, and the Clean Water Restoration Act, which restores the Clean Water Act to its original intent and gives back authority to the Federal Government to ensure that our wetlands are protected.

When the I-35W bridge collapsed on August 1st, Jim immediately secured $250 million from the Federal Government to aid in bridge reconstruction. And just one week after the collapse, Jim developed a National Highway System Bridge Initiative to address the problem of deteriorating bridge structures in America. (You can read more about Jim’s bridge initiative here.)

Since Jim has assumed the chair of the Transportation Committee, he has been able to use his leadership to enact legislation important to him and his constituents in the 8th district. Living up to its commitments, the New Direction Congress – in part with Jim’s leadership – has raised the minimum wage, has increased Pell Grants to college students across the country, and continues working to this day to end the conflict in Iraq and bring our troops home with dignity and honor.