Chronicles is made possible by Spring Hill Senior Living, the Regional Science Consortium, and the generous support of Thomas B. Hagen.

This is WQLN.

President Eisenhower once said, "We elect leaders not to rule, but to serve."

And my leadership, as your governor, will fulfill that solemn responsibility.

Without equivocation, without compromise, and with a full heart.

You deserve to have confidence in your government.

The destiny of our society depends on a government we can respect.

A government of the people, for the people, and by the people.

For respect is essential for government and democracy to flourish.

I think it should be noted that before we conduct this, have this conversation, or interview, you've seated me at the Presque Isle Environmental Center next to an exhibit that says, "Living Fossil."

You plopped me right down.

I just needed to know whether that was by design, or I just lucked out being associated as a living fossil.

You don't expect it, but he's always had these one-liners that just come out of nowhere.

Well, hi, ho, Governor Ridge.

Nice to see you.

Nice to meet you as well.

Thank you.

Thank y.. What in the world are you doing in my backyard?

Well, I smelled something cooking.

Smelled pretty good.

I was wondering what you were having for dinner tonight.

Thought I'd make a little enjoyment.

Well, having a little squirrel.

Squirrel.

Haven't had that for a while.

Very unexpected at times.

He'll kind of drop a one-liner that you're not really.

You're not ready for.

You're not ready for.

But it's good.

He times it.

Yeah.

One of the things about Tom Ridge that peopl.. because he will go the exact opposite way.

I made that, I learned that lesson early in our marriage, the first year we were married.

It was me or the dog.

He picked the dog.

Sometimes you can't give a specific about his sense of humor because it's very quick.

It's very extemporaneous.

Fire in the hole!

And if you want to see a real comedy act, you put my two brothers together.

If we have a good sense of humor, which is debatable, it kind of comes with a combination of my dad, deal with things as they come.

Don't take everything too seriously, Work hard.

And my mom just be willing to have a good heart, good spirit.

And sometimes the best laugh is laughing at yourself as opposed to don't laugh at other people.

The decision to move from Munhall to Erie, Pennsylvania was based on my dad's employment opportunity.

And we ended up living in a great neighborhood.

Veterans assisted public housing, so you got a lot of men coming back from the war, which was a fabulous place to grow up.

Kids everywhere.

The neighborhood was like one big family.

Mothers looked out not only for their kids, but for the neighbors' kids as well.

And we all looked out for each other.

It was a great place to grow up because you had that community feeling and that family feeling around it.

All you had to do was walk out and say, "Anybody want to play ball?"

And you'd see this horde of people descend on the main street.

When I was a teenager thinking high school things got just a little bit tough financially, so my mom got a part-time job as a saleswoman.

But everything they did was for the benefit of their family.

They could have had nicer cars, they could have some other nicer things.

But what they were going to earn, they were going to bring home and make sure they spend it on their kids' education.

And they were a good, loving couple, raised a good home, didn't have everything we wanted.

They made sure we had everything we needed.

And we're all better off in the long run because they were that way.

Growing up in that Ridge household, it was traditional in one hand and very special on the other.

The traditional was we had a very hardworking dad and a very active mom.

The special starts with my dad was prepared to work two jobs in order to assure that we could go to Catholic schools and begin our education in what he thought would be the best way and learning about Christian values in the best way.

Sisters of St.

Joseph were very, very instrumental in my education and in my upbringing.

Sister Alice Marie was my first and second grade teacher at St.

Andrews grade school.

As a young child, I had a tough time learning how to read.

And it took her two years to teach me, I think.

Maybe that means I'm a slow learner, but she was very patient with me.

She stayed after school with me and worked and worked and worked, worked on the alphabet, worked on reading.

The way you open the world to young people is through their reading capability.

And it was so critical to my future life and to all the things that I was able to accomplish in the future.

So I'm forever grateful for Sister Alice Marie.

Interesting enough, I end up marrying a librarian.

How about that?

So it's a good thing.

I think it will surprise people to know that I have very deep roots in Erie that go all the way back to 1837.

My parents were born here, my grandparents were born here, my great-grandparents were born here.

Even though I was born here, I didn't grow up in Erie and spent most of my life as a military dependent or an army brat in the vernacular.

Brat is bravery, resilience, adaptability, and toughness.

And that's exactly the kind of experiences, the preparation that you got as a child dependent in the army.

You made friends easily, you cried when you said goodbye to your friends, but you were able to adapt and deal with many, many different situations.

So when I say army brat, I say it as a badge of honor.

My father was a combat European theater veteran.

He had been a captain in the infantry and fought in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy.

And so not too many years after the war, there we are in Heidelberg in 1949.

And when I was three, I spoke better German than I spoke English.

I used to have to translate for my dad.

In June 1950, with Soviet approval and assistance, a North Korean communist army invaded the South.

In 1950, the Korean War broke out, and my father had been in Europe and seen refugees escaping from military conflict.

So he wanted us out of Europe in case war broke out again.

So we went back and forth between Erie and Germany in that time.

We made cameo appearances in Erie, frankly, with military dependents.

The children are going along with the program, and they do go along with it.

And there's a culture that is important to, I think, for military kids to be in, and the focus of being on a base or being part of a cause that is supporting the country, the United States of America.

I understood from the time I was young that people who make foreign policy in Washington could directly impact your life positively or negatively.

You are very aware of what's happening in the world, and you're very aware that there are potential dangers out there.

My interest in government and politics was probably nurtured more than anything else over table conversations in my home.

My mother was a Republican committeewoman, and my dad was a lifelong Democrat.

So you know we had some really interesting conversations.

I mean, sometimes my son David and his father would be the other side of the story, you know.

So then it would leave Tom and Vikki and I on the other side.

No one ever won an argument by being louder than someone else.

No one ever won an argument at the kitchen table by talking over someone else or just saying that's wrong.

You had to explain yourself clearly, succinctly, and if you couldn't back it up, you're better off just having your hamburger or cheeseburger that my mom made and just keep your mouth shut.

But you just better not pop off.

You better say something and know where your belief came fr.. You just didn't put it out there.

You better have some grounding.

I also suspect that it's where Tom started to get the balanced view that he's always had in politics and in his votes and in all the things that he did professionally.

Understanding can be brought about by one means, and that is telling the truth, because the truth is sufficient.

We are convinced that anyone that has known our way of life, they have given the free choice and the understanding of our system as opposed to all forms of dictatorship and sadism will choose our own.

Therefore, why lie about it?

The differences of opinion between my parents always in my mind reflected on how political discussions should be conducted writ large.

It was very much an articulation of what the First Amendment is supposed to be about.

You've got your point of view, I've got my point of view.

You don't personalize the debate, so it was always good, healthy, interesting discussions.

As World War II had spread around the earth until it became all-out global war, so the Cold War in the late 1950s and early 60s became a danger period of ever-increasing tensions that were worldwide.

In West Germany, United States Army troops patrolled the border, the iron curtain that divided the Communist world from the free West.

We were back in Germany from 1961 to 1964.

We arrived in Stuttgart about a month before the East Germans and Russians put up the wall in Berlin to segregate East Berlin from West Berlin.

But you were very aware that at any moment something could happen.

Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right.

Not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom.

When we came back to the States, we came back to Erie because both my parents were from Erie.

But it was people who had gone to school in Erie, they went to grade school and they went to middle school and high school, and we didn't have that.

We were from the outside, and it was a little bit difficult, and I think that has colored both my sister's adulthood as well as my brother and my own.

I mean, we had, my parents had expectations for all of us to go to college, but there was no college fund.

It was up to us to figure out how to do it.

Between my junior and senior year in high school, my strategy was to earn enough money to buy nice clothes so that I would fit in.

So I worked as a motel maid at Howard Johnson's, six days a week cleaning rooms.

Then I waitressed at the Dutch Pantry with my good friend Emily Fatica, and we sometimes pulled 13-hour shifts, waitressing at the Dutch Pantry at 18th and State.

It's a very educational experience when you're a waitress.

With Michelle, her worldliness was obvious right away.

She was able to use her life and communicate to the rest of us what the rest of the world might have been like.

And some of us really were just very sheltered growing up in Erie, but she definitely made an impact right away.

And I remember thinking, this girl is really smart.

And come to graduation, she was in the distinction of our class.

There were only eight distinctive graduates, class of 65, out of almost 500.

If dreams came true, I would put every young man or woman in the environment that I experienced at Cathedral Prep.

Very nurturing and very demanding at the same time.

It had an incredible impact on my life, obviously.

And it wasn't my idea to go to Harvard College because I thought that was a bridge too far.

And I had a couple of my teachers, a couple of priest friends of mine say, "Where you applying?"

And I told them, they said, "Those are nice schools.

We want you to apply to Cambridge."

What I remember the most, that touched my father till the day he died was that his son had him be given this honor, asked his dad if it was okay that he went because he knew it could perhaps have some implications or hardships for the family.

And it really touched my father.

And that's, so there was pride and, well, joy, if you will.

How many kids do that?

To get into any college, how many kids do that?

So my dad was very touched.

Never has so much military, economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively as in Vietnam.

The time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership, not tied to the policies and mistakes of the past.

I pledge to you, we shall have an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.

This time, vote like your whole world depended on it.

January 57 to almost January 58, my father was in Cambodia.

There was no internet, there was no cell phones, there was no phone calls.

We didn't talk to him for a year.

He wrote lots of letters about what Cambodia was like.

He was flying up to Saigon once a week.

And he came back from Vietnam and he said, we're going to get ourselves involved in a land war in Southeast Asia.

The politicians are not going to let us fight to win and it's going to turn around and swallow us.

And I hope my son doesn't have to serve.

A nation cannot remain great if it betrays its allies and lets down its friends.

Our defeat and humiliation in South Vietnam without question would promote recklessness in the councils of those great powers who have not yet abandoned their goals of world's conquest.

Unique experience when you get that letter inviting you to the military from President Nixon.

After my first year at law school, I got a draft notice.

Somebody at the Department of Defense decided that we need soldiers, we don't need more lawyers.

So one of the more interesting stories when I'm at Fort Benning, Georgia, the company clerk was an interesting guy.

I remember one time holding me aside, he said, "Ridge, did you really go to Harvard?"

"Yes, yes, Sergeant, I did."

"I thought you guys were supposed to be smart."

"I don't know, sir, that's what they tell me."

He said, "If you're so damn smart, what the heck are you doing in an infantry u.. with a one-way ticket to Southeast Asia and there's no guarantee you got a ticket back?"

I said, "I've asked that question myself many times, but I have no good answer."

My aunt had a Christmas Eve party in 1968, December 24th, and one of her five sons had been in basic training with Tom Ridge.

And he said, "Tom, why don't you come over to the house and maybe you would like to meet my cousins?"

Tom came in and I didn't think twice about him, but Michele apparently paid more attention to him, because they corresponded when he was in Vietnam.

I was struck by him.

He asked me out for dinner, and I still remember what he was wearing on our first date.

We almost went out, almost every night, it seemed, felt like it.

And it was only a week, because it was Christmas Eve, and then January, the day after New Year's, I had to go back to college, and he was going to be going to Fort Polk, Louisiana to advance infantry training.

So, you know, there was only one place he was going, and that was Vietnam.

(Music) None of my men were college graduates.

Immaterial!

Over there, you got each other's back, and when you went to school, it doesn't mean a damn bit of difference.

You got a job to do, and you used to do it, and you rely on everybody else around you to get it done.

There was a day, and we had some intelligence.

There were some bad guys in the neighborhood.

So, we went on patrol, and at a horrible side, I said, "Oh, who cares?

Suck it up, buttercup.

Here we go."

But I was in a lot of pain, and my appendix burst.

How about that?

Hardly a glorious ending to my time in Vietnam.

You know, I love being Gov.

I love working for President Bush.

But there's nothing like having served your country with such an admirable group of men and women who served in Southeast Asia.

I'm very proud of that relationship.

As it turned out, one of my best friends happened to be a Marine, and he lost his sight in Vietnam.

And this is how powerful he was on me.

Whenever we'd meet for lunch or a drink or something like that, he'd reach out his hand, and he'd say, "Good to see ya."

Then whenever we'd leave, he'd stand up and say, "Don't forget, bet on a vet.

Bet on a vet."

(Music) Tom and I were engaged in June of 71, but we broke our engagement.

He had to go finish law school.

He had finished a year of law school before he was drafted, and he needed to go back to law school, so that's what he did.

And I didn't have a job, so I went down to Maryland and worked for a sophisticated county library system.

And so we went our separate ways.

It was hard.

It was hard.

It was difficult.

He had been through a great deal.

In 72, we just packed our bags, hopped on a plane, and when we got to a particular city, made our way.

Something you could never do today.

And it is very Tom Ridge.

This is an instance that I remember.

I have no sense of direction, and I couldn't get anywhere without him.

And every city we were in, he would take out a map, and we'd decide where we were going to go, and he would get us there.

And finally, I said to him, "How do you do that?"

And he said, "Vikki, I was in Vietnam.

You learn to read maps very quickly."

And that's all he said.

And at the time, it was light, and it was kind of a joke, and later on, I thought, "Wow."

You know, he could even make light of something that had been so serious to him.

So those were the kind of moments that I remember, and like I said, typical of Tom, there was a little discussion about concern about passing the bar.

There were passing comments on Vietnam, as I shared, but the rest of the time, nothing.

It was an interesting transition from Duck Ph# Qu#ng Ngãi Province to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Dickinson Law School.

Very interesting transition.

The beer was colder in Carlisle.

And I never thought about leaving Erie, even when I get done with law school.

This has always been my home, and just a range of things I was able to do as a young man in this community helped me as much or anything that I learned at Harvard.

That's why I feel so strongly about being an Erie, Pennsylvania guy.

Tom, of course, was a young attorney in town, and a lot of the attorneys and DA's office congregated in our bar French Cates at Holidayham downtown at 18th and State.

So that's where I met him along with the other attorneys and those that enjoyed to him by once in a while.

Tom really was one of the first guys to go home of any night, but he'd always say to the guys, his friends, "I'll see you later.

I'm going home to Foxy Lady."

And they said, "Hold on, where is this woman?

He's been talking about this Foxy Lady for a very long time."

And I just looked at him and I said, "It's his dog."

And it was.

It was his dog.

He named his dog Foxy Lady.

My dad always said to us, "Whatever job you have now is going to prepare you for your next job.

So take everything you can learn because you don't know it, but you're learning something that's going to help you succeed in the next job."

It's very good advice.

I lived for a while in Wisconsin, and I think being out in Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin in 1973 was a big turn off for me.

Because I couldn't get a library job there, I had my degree.

I was selling bras in a retail store.

I took an accounting course at the university and discovered I hated accounting, but I needed... That was a skill that I ended up using when I was a library director.

So as I said before, everything you do prepares you for whatever's next.

Then I came back to Erie in 1976 because there was a job opening at the Erie City and County Library.

It was the old public library that became the Metropolitan Library and then became the City County Library.

The library world here sort of has the same kind of iterations I have where you have to reinvent yourself all the time.

So when I came back here, I had worked for a big library system, and I had a lot of experience.

Well, it was important for Michele when she came back to Erie to work in the library.

That was her profession, and she wanted to do it.

And Tom at that point was there too.

I don't know exactly when I first met her, but I knew from when they got back together how good they were for each other.

There's no doubt about that.

She was a very, very good partner for Tom.

We're both type A. Sometimes we just clash.

Even the second time we got engaged, he gave me a ring, and I got mad at him about something I was in the car with.

I took the ring off and threw it at him.

Well, he didn't know because it was probably his deaf side.

He didn't know that I threw the ring at him.

So then I had to, the next day I called my best friend, who also was his good friend, .. said, "You're not going to believe what I did, and I've got to get that ring.

Because if he finds that ring in his car, I'll never get it back."

I sweated for three days, and then I went up and I reached under the seat, and there was a diamond ring.

When she and Tom got together again, I was happy for them.

I think it was like they had come around and had a circuitous journey, but they ended up back together again, and they both seemed to be very happy with that.

They're both intellectually curious.

They're both hardworking.

They both are involved in the community and community service.

Michele supported him in every important way.

Just watching them, and watching how they treat each other in a lot of respect they have for each other, and he knows he's fortunate, and we know he's fortunate to have her at his side.

[Music] Chronicles is made possible by Springhill Senior Living, The Regional Science Consortium.

And the generous support of Thomas B. Hagen.

We question to learn.