Dick Thornburgh

At age 37 Dick Thornburgh was U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh with a national reputation for winning tough political corruption cases. At 4O, he was chairman of the Attorney General's Advisory Committee of United States Attorneys, and at 43 he was appointed assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice. That's a mouthful of accomplishment for any trial lawyer, but Thornburgh went on to win the governorship of Pennsylvania in a race in which it can be difficult to make a decent showing the first time around, much less to win. After eight successful years as governor, leaving office with a budget surplus and no new taxes, Thornburgh was appointed as the nation's 76th attorney general.

RAISING THE LEVEL of excitement at a North Philadelphia housing complex are Barbara Bush (center), who was campaigning with U.S. Senate candidate Dick Thornburgh and his wife, Ginny. They visited the library at the James Weldon Johnson Homes yesterday.

Barbara Bush reads to youngsters at the Johnson Homes day-care center, flanked by GOP Senate candidate Dick Thornburgh and his wife, Ginny. In town to campaign for Thornburgh, the first lady met with 22nd District police officers who helped establish a library in the main building of the housing development, and then visited the day-care center with the Thornburghs before a private luncheon for the campaign.

Dick Thornburgh, the 41st governor of Pennsylvania, was packing his personal belongings in the governor's mansion the other day when he uncovered a relic from his past - a souvenir program of the 1960 World Series, the one the Pittsburgh Pirates won over the favored Yankees on Bill Mazeroski's dramatic ninth inning home run in the seventh game. "Oh, boy," he shouted with a boyish glee, "am I glad I'm a saver. " The governor describes a saver as a person who throws nothing away - absolutely, positively nothing, not even a broken shoelace.

Dick Thornburgh's U.S. Senate campaign might have inadvertently gotten a new slogan - "Dick Thornburgh is the salvation of this sorry-assed state. " Maybe it could be the tagline for TV ads: "Vote Thornburgh, salvation of this sorry-assed state. " Or a new license plate slogan: Pennsylvania, the "sorry-assed state. " The line comes from Thornburgh campaign manager Michele Davis. She is quoted in a lenghty Associated Press story about Thornburgh's race against incumbent Democrat Harris Wofford.

In his latest upbeat ad to hit the airwaves, Republican Senate candidate Dick Thornburgh is endorsed by an elderly woman who praises the former governor for helping senior citizens. But the television ad, which began airing statewide yesterday, drew fierce reaction from other senior citizens, who said they organized on the spot as Seniors Against Dick's Deception (SADD) to protest what they call Thornburgh's dismal record on seniors' issues. Their chief complaint was that Thornburgh was taking credit for the state's drug plan for the elderly, when in fact, they say, he fought against it. Thornburgh's newest spot features 83-year-old Mildred Tapparo sitting in her yellow-tiled kitchen in Hershey, her hand resting on a gray Formica-top table.

It's hard to believe that former Gov. Dick Thornburgh's persistent mispronunciation of his Democratic opponent's name wasn't intentional. The Republican candidate for Senate insists he was calling Sen. Harris Wofford (WOFF-erd) "WOE-ford" and "WOOF-erd" because he has "trouble with names. " Getting names right is a skill every politician develops and hones to a fine art. If nothing else, Dick Thornburgh is a good politician. Even if he really does have trouble with names, it defies credibility that such a seasoned campaigner wouldn't have made a point of learning his opponent's name.

Both candidates for U.S. Senate showed up at the same hospital within the same hour yesterday to peddle their plans for national health care. Both say that health care is too expensive and mired in problems, and that something must be done. They agree on little else. Saying his opponent has tried to ease health-care problems with a "magic wand," Republican candidate Dick Thornburgh revealed his own proposal to make insurance more available and affordable to everyone. Joining him for a tour of Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh was U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan, who criticized the centerpiece of Sen. Harris Wofford's campaign - his proposal for national health insurance - as "an untried system that has problems.

I remember an angry and frustrated Dick Thornburgh, newly elected governor, testifying before a congressional investigating committee after the Three Mile Island accident, angry because of the contradiction and stonewalling from officials at Metropolitan Edison and frustrated because his decisions concerning the health and welfare of the people depended on reliable information not forthcoming from "experts. " It was a different Dick Thornburgh speaking during Law Day ceremonies on the steps of the Montgomery County Court House.

This is about the big John O'Hara mystery at the Waldorf-Astoria last month, a leftover from the Pennsylvania Society weekend. This has nothing to do with those mystery weekends you read about at the big hotels where guests check in to be part of a fictitious murder that will take place during their stay. They are given certain clues to the murder and before you can say Agatha Christie, everybody's a Charlie Chan. This is about a different kind of mystery - a mystery involving a table of John O'Hara readers who couldn't remember the name of the principal character in O'Hara's great political novel, Ten North Frederick.

YO, ALLYSON, I maybe coulda saved you some paperwork. See, I was at this Pennsylvania Political Science Association gig last week, and some of us were talking about the state's famous unbroken "cycle" of electing governors of different parties every eight years. This started back in 1946, way before our governors were allowed to run for a second term. That second-term stuff started with Milton Shapp in 1974. He won. So has, as I know you know, every incumbent governor since.

Michael J. Melody Jr., 80, of Exton, a Chester County Common Pleas Court judge for 22 years, died of pneumonia on Thursday, May 17, at St. Martha Manor in Downingtown, a skilled-nursing home owned by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Melody graduated from St. Joseph's Preparatory School in 1950, earned a bachelor's degree at what is now St. Joseph's University in 1954, and graduated in 1957 from what is now Georgetown University Law Center. Until 1959, he served in the Army.

HARRISBURG - Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett is hoping that if he wins, he can accomplish what two previous GOP governors were unable to do during the course of two decades: privatize the state's liquor stores. Corbett made his case this week for unloading Pennsylvania's oft-criticized system for selling liquor and wine, arguing that the state's recession-ravaged coffers could get a significant boost from selling it off. "We need to move our state out of the 19th century and refocus state government on its core functions and services," he said in a news release Tuesday.

Gov. Rendell and former Gov. Dick Thornburgh will be among the speakers today at a memorial service for civic leader Fitz Eugene Dixon Jr. Mr. Dixon, the former owner of the Philadelphia 76ers who brought Julius "Dr. J" Erving to the city and put the LOVE sculpture back on its pedestal at JFK Plaza, died in August of melanoma at age 82. In a long life filled with service to his city, Mr. Dixon was a member and former chairman of the Art...

Regionalism, a concept for economic development and political cooperation with a mixed record of success, is about to find a new home in Philadelphia. David B. Thornburgh, 47, a division director of the Pennsylvania Economy League and son of Dick Thornburgh, the former governor and U.S. attorney general, will take over a fledgling national group dedicated to regional development and bring it to Philadelphia. He will step down after 11 1/2 years of leading the Philadelphia think tank, a leader in regionalism efforts.

U.S. District Judge Jay C. Waldman, 58, a federal judge in Philadelphia for almost 15 years and a Republican strategist behind the election and administration of Gov. Dick Thornburgh, died yesterday of cancer. Judge Waldman died in Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he had been undergoing cancer treatment since the beginning of the year. He stopped coming to the courthouse in Center City around that time. Judge Waldman's quick deterioration and death left friends stunned, and praise poured in from those who had known him over a 30-year career as a lawyer, federal prosecutor, GOP worker, state official and judge.

A senior judge from Bucks County who once served as the state's top prosecutor will decide whether it is too late to try nine suspects in the 1969 race-riot murder of a black woman in York. Judge Edward G. Biester Jr., a former Republican congressman and state attorney general, was appointed last week by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to rule on that narrow issue. Whether Biester will take on a broader role in the case was unclear yesterday. Nine men, including York Mayor Charles H. Robertson, are charged in the July 1969 shotgun slaying of Lillie Belle Allen.

It was perhaps the definition of clout. Five governors, five bishops, dozens of big-name pols, honor guards, bagpipers and 1,000 mourners in a packed, ornate cathedral. One bishop, Scranton's James C. Timlin, wept openly. And the 1,000 gave the deceased a spontaneous sustained standing ovation. Amid it all, former Gov. Robert Casey was laid to rest Saturday, eulogized for public service, private tenacity, praised as a man of faith and family. But behind the big-picture saga - his influence on politics, triumphs after defeats, resolve in the face of illness - is a mosaic of smaller stories, ties and links to so many others.

Frederick D. Tecce, 86, a businessman and avid horseman, died suddenly of an apparent heart attack Friday at his home in Springfield Township, Montgomery County. Mr. Tecce, who grew up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia and who spent 25 years in Bal Harbour, Fla., had been involved in the textile industry for more than 50 years, family members said. He was principal and owner of Marionette Mills, a textile manufacturer with offices in Coatesville and Philadelphia, as well as a partner in Permatwist Co. U.S.A.

When they lived in their red-brick, Georgian-style residence during her husband's two terms as governor of Pennsylvania, Ginny Thornburgh named the estate the "Governor's Home" instead of the "Governor's Mansion. " Home and family have always come first for her, she said, and her work today as the director of the religion and disability program for the National Organization on Disability came about because of her love for her 39-year-old son, Peter, who is mentally retarded. For more than 30 years, this tall, slender woman with the animated, friendly demeanor has been a tireless worker on behalf of the disabled.