Patricia Sheridan's Breakfast With ... Tom Ridge
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Former Pennsylvania Gov. and first Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge now is the president and CEO of Ridge Global LLC, an advisory corporation. He attended Harvard University on a scholarship, then went to Dickinson Law School. He was drafted into the Vietnam War and earned a Bronze Star. His book "The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege ... and How We Can Be Safe Again" was published last year and garnered a lot of attention for what he considers a misunderstanding about politics and raising the alert before the presidential election. He will speak at the annual Traffic Club of Pittsburgh dinner Thursday at the Omni William Penn. For information, call 412-331-7151.
Did your time in Vietnam change your personality?
See the My experience in the military, which included training in the country for almost a year and then being an infantry solider, was something of which I'm particularly proud. To put it in summary fashion, I don't dwell on my experience as a soldier, but I do draw on it from time to time.
You were drafted like so many men at the time. Did you think "why now?" Weren't you in law school?
In retrospect I look back and say the Pentagon and how they conducted the war will always be subjected to criticism. But one criticism they'll never get is eliminating the deferral status to people who were in law school. I think most Americans think we have too many lawyers anyhow [laughs]. So it was a career interruption. I was surprised. I was disappointed, but also as I look back on the experience, hopefully it made me a better lawyer and just a better person and a better public servant.
Do you miss being in the loop the way you were when you held government office?
Oh, yes. First of all, I loved being governor. Six years, nine months and five days. It was a marvelous and extraordinary experience. Homeland Security was an entirely different operation. We wrote the job description after I said "yes" to the president. There was no national strategy. There was no department. There were a lot of things that made it the most challenging. There are two things I miss ... One, not knowing. I was briefed every morning, and I know a lot of things that most Americans wouldn't care to know. So I miss not knowing, and I really do miss the people that I worked with. From the governor's side, I miss effecting significant change and the people I worked with way back when.
First Published March 8, 2010 12:58 am
