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

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.

Click here to see Jim's resume.