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Before we ever got married, I said, "I know you're going to at some point go into public life."

That's not what I signed up for, but I understood that that's what we're going to do.

He needed to do it.

I believed in him so strongly.

I felt that he had a real gift, and he needed to fulfill that potential and that gift.

Now, what you have to understand is, 1980 was presidential primary year.

This really whetted his appetite.

He was the Erie County chairman for George H. W. Bush's presidential primary in Pennsylvania.

I believe I'll be president of the United States.

I have not been able to prove that and still can, but I firmly, deeply believe it.

It's that that drives me, service to country, conviction about country.

I met Papa Bush because he ran for president of the United States.

I was his Erie County chairman, and we won by a wider margin in Erie County than he won any other county in Pennsylvania.

That probably got his attention and the attention of some of his supporters.

My mother was a Republican committee woman, and so as soon as I could walk, I was delivering campaign literature, and I thought politics was normal.

I thought all kids watched election returns like sporting events at night, and I remember Senator Hines, he was one of my mother's heroes and was a real rock star in Pittsburgh, in particular, and in Pennsylvania.

I enjoyed being with people.

Indeed, if you're a politician and you don't genuinely like people, you will end up hating yourself and hating your work.

When I was in college, I got on his campaign full-time from my EP, Hines for Senate 76, and seven days a week learned the Hines work ethic, and that was my career goal, work for Senator Hines, and along comes Tom Ridge.

I have been spelling out, I think better lately, the differences with Governor Reagan.

Not to tear him down, but with one thing in mind, who best to defeat Jimmy Carter?

I met Governor Ridge in the 1980 Bush for President campaign, and we beat Reagan in Pennsylvania and then Bush won Michigan, and that had a very large part to do with Bush being asked to be on the ticket.

Let us pledge to restore in our time the American spirit of voluntary service, of cooperation, of private and community initiative.

As your nominee, I pledge to you to restore to the federal government the capacity to do the people's work without dominating their lives.

I pledge to you... [Applause] After the campaign in Erie, Tom was like being groomed and I knew he was anxious to do things in the future, and my impression of him was that he was going to do whatever he wanted to do.

So December of 1980, we go down to Harrisburg.

Marc Lincoln Marks was the current congressional rep, and Tom had talked to Marks, and Tom asked him, he said, "Respectfully, if you decide not to run, would you please let me know?"

And so he did, he called Tom and said, "I'm not going to run this cycle, it's an open seat."

When Tom decided to run for Congress, he came down to see me.

I was an Allegheny College at the time, and I basically said, "Why?"

And he laid it out for me, and he said, "What do you think?"

And he said, "I don't like it."

He said, "Why not?"

And I said, "Because you're a very honest person," and I had a cynical view of politics at the time, I said, "I think you're going to have to change the way you are to be successful, and I really don't want to see that."

I said, "If you stay the way you are, I don't think you're going to win, and I don't want that to happen to you either."

And he said he understood, and he said, "Let me just try my way and see what happens."

I said, "Okay, I'm in."

My first political campaign in 1982 was one of the most extraordinary experiences I've ever enjoyed.

There's nothing like interacting with the people that you want to represent, and what I found out firsthand is how open and accessible people are to you when you seek their political support.

Putting the team together that Tom did, again, some of it was recruiting by Tom, some of it was just relationships.

I didn't talk to him for about two years, and I asked my wife at the time, I said, "What do you think about Erie?"

And she's there, "Why do you ask?

This was a Saturday."

And that following Tuesday, Tom Ridge calls me and said, "I want to talk to you about managing my congressional campaign."

The next thing you knew, I was in the running to be his campaign manager.

I remember when Tom brought Mark Holman down to see me and introduced me, and I think I said, "Why is this 14-year-old, which could be running your campaign, because Mark Holman then and now looks so young?"

I had the good fortune at Allegheny College of living across the hall from this guy named David Ridge.

So I met Tom probably, I guess, 1979 or thereabouts.

I thought he was super cool.

He was a successful lawyer.

He had a fast car.

So he was sort of what I was aspiring to be when I graduated.

My friend Mark Campbell, who became Tom's chief of staff, he was my first assistant when I was the resident director of a dorm in Allegheny College.

So Mark and I were good friends even before then, and he had an interest in politics.

So I kind of introduced him to Tom and said he'd come on board, and he's been with Tom every day since then.

I remember sitting down in David's room with Tom, and he said, "If you're willing to do it, I can pay you $75 a week, and you room and board at my parents' house."

A week after graduation, packed up my car, drove up to Erie, and moved in with Mr.

and Mrs.

Ridge, which I feel, among all of my campaign compatriots, was the most unique experience, because I got to see the Ridges up close and personal and know what an influence they were on Tom's life.

And as I think back on it now, he was campaigning to attract people like his dad to vote for him, sort of those, you know, maybe moderate to conservative Democrats who grew up working real hard and wanting to just sort of be able to do all that they could for their families.

Most of us were neophytes or newbies in the campaign business, and there were a few that knew what they were doing, like Mark Holman, thank goodness he was there, and we just kind of did whatever he told us to do, and it sort of worked, I guess.

I mean, during the course of that 82 campaign, there were a lot of highs and a lot of lows.

And throughout it all, Mark Holman was just, "It's fine.

It'll be all right.

Don't worry about what someone else is doing.

We're going to do this.

We're going to do this."

So, perfect, perfect campaign match for Tom at the time.

We are happy to say, after we came up with the candidate we felt would be the best for the area, we did get Buzz Andrezeski over the weekend to declare that he would be a candidate for the 21st Congressional District.

It was not a race that Tom was certainly favored in.

We were running against a popular state senator in Buzz Andrezeski.

It was the depths of a very harsh recession that hit western Pennsylvania very hard.

And the district, which was then all of Erie, all of Crawford, all of Mercer, and just a little bit of Lawrence County, was Democratic.

We've all seen these faces over and over again in the past few weeks.

They are the people who want to be the U.S.

Congressman from the 21st District of Pennsylvania.

Yeah, we're going to have a, I'm sure, a spirited campaign in the fall.

You have to remember that we never got money from the RNC.

They said he's a great candidate, he's a nice guy, doesn't have a chance to win.

But the people who came in for Tom in that 82 campaign, Barbara Bush, that's when I met Mrs.

Bush, Gerald Ford came in for him, John Heinz and Bob Dole.

That was the quality of candidate he was, the people of that stature would come in and help him campaign.

That's been Tom's sort of his good fortune all along, is that he's always deserved, but also was able to attract really good people to help him.

[Applause] Going back to ancient days, Governor Ridge and I met way back when he was running for the United States Congress at the time.

He was the assistant district attorney in Erie County, and he had come to church.

I'm a young African-American preacher.

Here's a white gentleman coming to church asking for my support, but when he gets there, he sees a tragedy.

It was to be a special day for the church, the celebration of Reverend Dwayne Brock's first year as pastor.

But instead of music, it was the sound of broken glass being swept up that greeted the morning worshippers.

According to Erie Police, a little after 7 o'clock this morning, a passing car fired four or five shots at the front door of the church.

Fortunately, no one was inside at the time.

This is the most recent attack upon the church.

Reverend Brock hopes it will be the last of what he calls racially motivated assaults upon black area churches.

I want the public to know that we're not going to sit by idly and let this type of thing go on.

We're not letting our churches be a haven of vandalism.

That was a traumatic experience for me.

And then this man named Tom Ridge, he laid his political aspirations aside and stood with me literally all day long.

I mean hours, hours.

When he should have been out on the campaign trail, he stood with me for hours just to make sure that I was okay.

I will never forget that as long as I live.

Everybody was important to him, no matter who he talked to.

I was genuinely interested in the people that he served.

He never left any affair or event until the last person could speak to him.

I don't care how big it was or how small it was, or if he was giving a speech somewhere.

Tom always stayed and he talked to everybody that was there that wanted to talk to him.

Yeah, there was no getting out of working hard for him.

But I think those of us who had known Tom for some time, we believed he was going to pull it out.

He just, he was the honorable person.

He had really good campaign people around him.

Just, I mean, just a really good team.

An incredible opportunity.

You know, I've met friends.. made some new friends regardless of what happened.

We'll always be friends, traveled in parts of the district that I have never seen.

Overall, you know, I say it's been very, very positive.

Win or lose, Ridge said he definitely has plans to do one thing after election day.

Quit drinking coffee.

So the night before the election, I started to cry and Tom said, "Why are you crying?

Are you worried we're going to lose?"

I said, "I'm not crying about that.

I'm just crying about how disappointed people are going to be who have worked so hard for you if you don't win."

Remember, those are the days when campaign, people who campaigned for you were all volunteers.

But these are all people who really believed in his candidacy.

Well, the night of the election, initially, I remember I'm talking with multiple supporters behind headquarters.

And initially we were down by several hundred votes.

Ridge knows he must do very well in Crawford and Mercer counties to overcome an Andrezeski-heavy city of Erie vote.

After voting, Ridge left for a swing through all four counties in the northwestern Pennsylvania 21st congressional district.

That was the first year after the 1980 census that the district was redrawn.

In the census redraw, they added six municipalities in northern Lawrence County, not many votes.

But if you go back and you look at the results from election day, if the district was still just all Erie, all Crawford, all Mercer - Buzz wins.

But the addition of those votes and the fact that Tom carried that section of Lawrence County by about 1,500 votes was enough to flip it to a 729 vote margin for Tom.

It was about 1030 at night.

Erie County Courthouse had made a 3,000 vote error in our opponent's favor in counting.

And the Governor and I were in the back room preparing a possible concession speech.

So we felt the angst of defeat and then our guys come back from the courthouse, like settle down.

Our numbers are good.

Buckle up.

It's going to be a long night.

Based on the numbers we have, I have enough.

[Applause] Today Ridge got about 400 more as Erie County election clerk Flo Fabrizio and his staff did some recalculating.

That puts Ridge up by almost 900 votes now.

But there was never any doubt in the mind of... Tom Ridge at the time was one of six Republicans that won in open seats nationally.

We won by 729 votes out of 164,000 cast, 0.02%.

You learn that every vote counts.

For years later, Mr.

Ridge would almost on a daily basis play 729 as his daily number in the lottery.

I don't know if he ever won, but he played it.

We were focused on getting to work.

And Congressman Ridge at the time was just the dedicated public servant of really serious about learning Washington, learning how to run the office.

But also developing a rapport from the constituents back home quickly because we knew we were going to be a number one target of the Democratic Congressional Committee in our first run for reelection.

And the bellwether nature of the district is very real.

Every presidential campaign, it's a test market.

Erie really is Erie-sistable So we were extremely focused and both on the service end as well as the political end.

I think I've demonstrated I'm independent.

I voted and supported the president when I thought he was right.

I voted and haven't supported the president when I thought he was wrong.

And so I'm comfortable that I have and will continue to promote the special interests of Northwestern Pennsylvania... Working in a congressional office, you've got people with all kinds of problems, some of which weren't really federal problems.

But we tried to make sure that they got a person that could help them with them.

And I think we got a reputation and people were willing to come and talk to us about their problems.

And they knew that Tom would be there to help resolve some of these things.

There were some problems we couldn't, but we didn't want to say no to anybody because they were hurting.

And we didn't want them to feel that they were alone and didn't have somebody that would help them with a problem.

Ultimately, the aim of local politics or state politics or national politics is all the same.

And that's doing good things for good people.

But there is a difference.

At the local level, which I think are the toughest jobs in politics, it's not the jobs in Washington that are the hard ones.

It's the ones that are back here because you're the front line of providing vital services for people on a daily basis, making sure that sidewalks are cleared, making sure that garbage is picked up, making sure that the water is running.

All of that is much more important to a person on a daily basis than is the defense authorization bill.

So there was that difference.

And I think that's still true today.

I just always kind of appreciate the fact that he always thought his time was everybody else's time.

There's something about this town, in addition to the lake.

There's a staying ability.

And I think it really goes down to it's so deeply rooted.

And if you look at Erie and really look at Erie, it's not red versus blue.

It's not Republican versus Democrat.

Sure.

Sure, people get wrapped around the axle and that stuff.

And you know what's not important?

When they have a problem.

It was late Friday afternoon, Memorial Day weekend, 1985.

He was home doing the thing, the one thing that he loved doing when he came home, and that's gardening.

He liked digging in the dirt because it gave him time to think.

In Pennsylvania, the death toll reached more than 60.

It was a carnage.

It was like a war.

There was people all over the place.

I felt like I was about the only one left in town.

There was just nobody here.

I couldn't believe it.

Now they're gone.

Now I don't got no one.

Erie County, Pennsylvania, where more than a dozen died, appeared to be the hardest hit.

Officials say there was $13 million worth of damage.

This massive tornado had swung through and right through the heart of Albion, P.A.

And I thought the most important thing for me to do, this is in the heart of my district, in the heart of Erie County, I better get there.

See if there's any way I can help.

He went out to that community because we had campaigned in that community.

We had been out in that community.

And he was very concerned about what had happened.

That first trip to Albion, I was with the Governor, then congressman, and you could hear the chainsaws running.

And you could, you know, it was a bright, sun shiny day, and people were already out trying to start to build and put their communities back together.

It's just, I don't know.

I think we'll probably stay, I can't say positive.

What you also saw too was just this awesome destruction.

Another person died today, bringing to seven the number of people dead as the result of Friday.

The community of Atlantic has been declared a federal disaster area by President Reagan.

I remember vividly the level of devastation and how indiscriminate it was.

Neighbors were rattling around neighbors, consoling one another, trying to help one another go through the remains of their businesses and their homes.

One visual memory I have is I walked into the store, the clock had stopped the time the tornado went through.

Everything stopped that day, pretty powerful.

You're just, it was overwhelming.

As I recall, that series of tornadoes killed dozens and dozens of people.

But subsequently, he found particularly that the response of the federal government to that disaster was woeful.

The federal government was there, but these people, especially in Albion, were in such shock.

And they had set up all these tables with all these emergency organizations that did things like this, you know, to help people.

And they were sitting across the table from one of these organizations, and I could tell they weren't taking in all this information that people needed to know in order to get help for whatever happened to them.

Many people felt that the second disaster occurred as soon as FEMA came to town, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, because the expectations were not realized, the services were not provided in a timely and in many instances in a compassionate manner.

Now I've got to go out and get a loan at 11.25% to rebuild my home that I've lost.

Why should I be penalized?

Because I carry insurance.

That's basically what happened.

Storm's over.

Now it's boiling down to the dollars and cents when you really need something.

It's you get down to the real nitty gritty.

You see the real true side of people, and sometimes it almost disgusts you.

We really pushed and pushed and pushed to try to get everything that our constituents needed and were entitled to.

We'll do the paperwork, but we're not going to let the paperwork get in front of the immediate recovery effort.

And it was at the time when I remember FEMA was bringing all these trailers in and warehousing them and screwing around bureaucratically and not just pulling the trailers onto the lot where the people were lifting.

Get them in the trailer and we'll work on the rest of this stuff that they're asking people to provide proof of insurance.

We became a little impatient with the federal response.

The middle of the disaster is not a time to be pinch and pennies.

When we know full well we're probably throwing money out the door, at less worthy causes than helping communities rebuild their lives and their family infrastructure and their communities.

This is the first time in 13 years anybody's tried to change the direction, the kind of services, the delivery of services of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

And so it led him to sponsor the first reforms of FEMA in probably since its inception.

So with that as background, I think that he very much appreciated, particularly in those moments when we were facing a disaster on a statewide basis, that government has to be facing forward.

Government has to be, if at all possible, ahead of the emergency.

And certainly government needs to be in there immediately after to try to help put people's lives back together.

And I think it did all come from those tornadoes in 1985.

The gentleman, Mr.

Ridge, is recognized for five minutes.

Mr.

Speaker, I was not at all pleased with the recovery effort which the Federal Emergency Management Agency directed in my district during the summer of 1985.

Disaster victims were waiting in line for temporary housing up to six weeks.

I was touring demolished home sites arguing with federal officials about debris removal.

And they weren't concerned about the debris removal, they were concerned about the specific inflexible application of a regulation, regardless of the impact on the public.

I discovered that our federal agency responsible, mandated with a mission to provide emergency management assistance following a national disaster declaration, was more concerned with asserting its authority than in developing the necessary working partnership with state and local governments to help these people in a most serious time of need.

They were more concerned with scoring well on their agency performance reviews than in meeting the needs of individuals suffering who had unique, very personal and immediate problems.

Mother Nature has a fury that few of us have seen.

It's unpredictable, it's indiscriminating, and it's devastating.

People who are affected by hurricanes, by floods, and by tornadoes suffer losses beyond description.

And even as a viewer and observer, you'll never feel the pain unless you're actually one of those victims.

And that's what we're trying to do today.

We're trying to take FEMA's mission, which Congress mandated.

We're trying to make it more compassionate.

We're trying to make it more effective.

We're trying to make it more timely.

These people don't ask for much, but since we've mandated the mission, we want FEMA to do it better, certainly a lot better than they did it in my district on May 31, 1985.

I'm an engineer by training, a politician by disease, and I'll probably die from it.

And I'm an academic by accident.

But I feel very strongly that the most important word in the Constitution happens to be the first word, "We."

It's our government, and we all should be embracing the word.

That's an inclusive word.

It doesn't say "we" some of us.

And I think Tom Ridge was a visionary in recognizing the actual needs of a local community when it came to disasters, and making sure that there could be a partnership with the federal government that did not usurp the responsibilities of states and local governments.

And the Stafford Act helped do that.

Our bill will clearly state what types of assistance are eligible for federal support, at what level, and for what purpose.

Specific cost-sharing formulas will ensure that bureaucratic infighting does not impede the expeditious delivery of services to people in their hour of need.

It will also ensure that individuals and state and local governments will know what is available to a system at all times.

And to this day, it drives me crazy that it's called the Stafford Act.

It's H.R.

2707.

It's Tom Ridge's bill.

The reason it's called the Stafford Act and not the Tom Ridge Act is because I said, "How do you get anything done in this Congress?"

Because he was in Congress 12 years and always in the minority.

And he said, "Well, if you don't care who gets the credit, you can get things done in Congress."

And that's how he looked at it.

He didn't care where he got the credit as long as it got done.

And that is a prime example of the Stafford Act.

You talk about integrity.

I mean, what kind of... We don't have that in Congress today.

I was Secretary of Transportation.

And when Hurricane Andrew hit, and I was asked by the president to get down to Florida and help with the disaster, the Stafford Act was the roadmap for helping people in Florida when Hurricane Andrew hit.

And working closely with the governor of Florida, who was a Democrat, but it was a Stafford Act that made the response more practical and one that involved local governments and state governments as well as the federal government.

And so it invited partnerships in working together.

And again, partisanship played no role in it.

Disasters do not pick Republicans or Democrats to be victims.

They just create victims.

And I like to say that the Stafford Act invited... It was kind of a conscience for the federal government, a conscience for state government, a conscience for local government.

Work together.

Get it done.

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

And the generous support of Thomas B. Hagen.

We question to learn.