The FBI snoops through your family's life. Strangers remember Abbie as a fame-crazed, wise-guy anarchist who opposed the Vietnam War but forget how much he loved watching Patriots games. Kids today mostly know him as a character in "Forrest Gump."
And sometimes Jack just misses the wild, sad joker who blazed through his - and Americans' - lives like a Roman candle, only to die alone.
"I carried a heavy load. But Abbie was my brother," said Hoffman, a 67-year-old Framingham resident. "He's my brother 'til the day I die."
The Hoffman boys are together again in the city they grew up in at the Worcester Historical Museum.
Organized by Holy V. Izard, the exhibit "To Abbie With Love" uses photographs, posters, old letters and FBI surveillance reports to remember the activist who turned the Chicago Seven trial into a media circus and nominated a pig to run against Richard Nixon for president.
The WHM's curator of collections, Izard organized the show "to address the real '60s during a terribly-complicated time" when young Americans were losing their lives in an unpopular war.
An unabashed admirer, Izard regards Hoffman "as a committed revolutionary who was born and got his feet wet in Worcester."
Through 26 photos and other objects, the exhibit tracks Hoffman from his youth in Worcester to Brandeis University where he became politically active and into national prominence when he co-founded the Youth International Party, or Yippies, to stop the Vietnam War.
Izard's wall text and captions portray Hoffman as one of the first counter-cultural activists to bring Marshall McLuhan's credo "the media is the message" to the national political stage.
Hoffman threw away dollars bills at the New York Stock Exchange. He led anti-war protesters in an attempt to levitate the Pentagon. And he encouraged the judge presiding at the Chicago Seven trial to try LSD.
"Abbie was perfect for the climate of the '60s," said Jack Hoffman. "He understood the power of imagery. He knew how to play to the camera."
The exhibit includes copies of Hoffman's 1971 underground manifesto "Steal This Book" and "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture," a 1980 autobiography published when he was on the run.
The exhibit doesn't avoid the controversy, legal problems and depression that plagued Hoffman after he was arrested on drug charges in 1973 and went underground for several years.
For visitors, it's a heady time trip through the '60s with Abbie as a grinning tour guide with stops in Berkeley, Woodstock and on the lam.
In one photo, two cops arrest a shirtless Abbie at a protest. John Lennon and Abbie toke up in Central Park in another. Wearing a red, white and blue flag shirt, Abbie flashes the provocative grin that drove square Americans nuts. Several folders contain just some of the 16,000 pages of FBI reports devoted to Hoffman and his activities.
For Jack, it's a bittersweet reminder of the "Jewish Road Warrior" who changed American politics with a radical mix of homegrown "street smarts," old-fashioned idealism and guerrilla theater.
During a recent visit to the exhibit, he speaks excitedly about his big brother, gesturing extravagantly at photos of a life that diverged from his own only to come back together near the end.
Born Abbott Howard Hoffman in 1936, he was the oldest of three children raised by first generation Jewish immigrant parents whose families fled religious persecution in Europe and Russia.
"The day he was born, Abbie stood out," said Jack who was born three years later. A photo on display shows 8-year-old tousle-haired Abbie in shorts with his arm protectively draped around his younger brother's shoulder.
The two brothers and their little sister Phyllis grew up in a three-decker at 6 Ruth St. where Abbie grew into a brainy tough guy with a taste for folk and black music and an early provocative streak.
As a teenager, he was kicked out of Classical High School for writing an essay on atheism and had to transfer to Worcester Academy.
After he embraced leftist politics, Abbie's antics and the public scrutiny that followed troubled his father who owned a medical supply company. "My father didn't understand Abbie's larger purpose," recalled Jack. "But Abbie wanted our father to be proud of him."
In a poignant 1959 "Dear Dad" letter on display, Abbie wrote of "trying to break away from the world you and Ma brought me up in" and expressed love for his father despite their disagreements.
For most of a tumultuous decade, Abbie played a high-profile role in anti-war protests that culminated in the Chicago Seven trial for conspiracy to incite a riot. While the seven defendants' convictions were overturned on appeal, Abbie was driven underground in 1973 by what he always claimed was a trumped-up drug bust.
After Abbie skipped bail, Jack acknowledged he sometimes served as "courier" for a manuscript for his autobiography and the two sometimes attended football games together, drawing "thumbs up" signs from supporters in the crowd.
After surrendering to authorities in 1980 and serving a one-year sentence, Abbie Hoffman re-emerged as an activist protesting CIA recruiters on campus and environmental pollution.
By the mid-1980s, Jack said an aging Abbie despaired a new generation mainly regarded him as a '60s celebrity rather than a bearer of a still-relevant message to challenge authority.
"Abbie was really an introvert, a very private person," Jack observed. "When people recognized him, he feared they were fans. He once said 'Someday they'll be naming their dogs and babies after me."'
But unknown to others, Abbie was battling a deep-seated depression.
Over time, Jack has accepted that Abbie killed himself at 52 on April 12, 1989 by ingesting large amounts of phenobarbital.
Before his death, Abbie sent the government several checks for back taxes, his brother believes, as if to say, "We're even. I owe you nothing. You never got me."
"He pulled on his favorite cowboy boots, laid down in bed and went to sleep," said Jack Hoffman, adding cryptically, "You can only play a 45 (r.p.m. record) so many times."
Looking around the exhibit, Jack remembered the older brother who chased girls and kept neighborhood bullies off his back. "These aren't my memories," he said. "These are the iconic Abbies."
But Jack hopes the exhibit reminds the public and a younger generation that Abbie Hoffman was more than "a footnote to the '60s."
He insisted his brother never surrendered his faith in a Jeffersonian-style democracy and was newly dedicated to fighting for the environment at the time of his death. "I think it's important to remember Abbie kept the candle burning," he said."Abbie was a national hero. He was one of the most important national figures of the '60s."
And if still alive, what would a 70-year-old Abbie Hoffman be doing today?
Jack never paused. "He'd be whooping it up on campus."
ESSENTIALS
- The Worcester Historical Museum and Library is located at 30 Elm St., Worcester.
- The exhibit "To Abbie With Love" runs through Feb. 19. It may be extended.
- It is open Tuesday, through Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
- For information about exhibits, tours or special events, call 508-753-8278 or visit www.worcesterhistory.org.
