Biography
Edward Charles Hoffmans — the surname really does end in s — was 31 at the time of the Chicago 15 action, living in Iowa City, working as a draft counselor after teaching English at the University of Northern Iowa, and already nationally controversial for publicly advocating draft resistance. Before dawn on May 25, 1969 he and fourteen others entered the Selective Service offices at 2355 West 63rd Street in Chicago, removed roughly fifty sacks containing about 40,000 draft records and burned them in the alley, then stayed at the scene singing until police arrested them and took them to Cook County Jail. A federal grand jury indicted all fifteen on June 3, 1969 on four counts: willful damage to federal property, destruction of federal records, interference with the Military Selective Service Act, and conspiracy. His case did not follow the ten defendants convicted by the jury in June 1970: on June 3, 1970 Judge Edwin Robson found him incompetent and severed his case, committing him to the federal medical center at Springfield, Missouri, where he was found competent shortly after arriving and released on bond on August 21 — a commitment of about 79 days. On November 18, 1970 he pleaded guilty under an agreement calling for three years in federal prison with no probation, surrendered on January 8, 1971, and served at the Federal Correctional Institution at Sandstone, Minnesota, where he was confirmed still imprisoned on February 16, 1972; the date of his actual release has not been found. His reported ages place his birth in 1937 or 1938. He later became a prominent Chicago disability-rights activist with ADAPT, and Access Living’s 2019 annual report lists donations in his memory, establishing that he had died by that year; no obituary or exact date of death has been located.
