Pa. Governor-elect Corbett a 'tough guy' from beginning

If not for an errant bottle of bleach, Pennsylvania Gov.-elect Tom Corbett and his wife, Susan, might not have ended up together.

Corbett, a Republican who becomes the first Allegheny County resident to be elected governor since Richard Thornburgh in 1978, met his wife of 38 years at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, while he was dating another girl.

He planned to take his girlfriend to a movie Oct. 5, 1968, but she canceled after accidentally burning her foot by dumping a bottle of hair bleach on it.

"I asked her if I could take Sue to the movie instead, and she said it was OK," said Corbett, 61, of Shaler, who remembers the date of that outing without prompting but cannot recall the movie they saw. "And that was it. All it took was one date, and we've been together ever since."

Though he has political enemies and a lawsuit pending by a former employee, his friends and colleagues describe the two-time state attorney general and former U.S. attorney as loyal and honest, a prosecutor dedicated to punishing criminals and helping people.

Sue Corbett says that when they return to their home off Middle Road in Shaler, Corbett becomes just another suburban husband.

"He loves to spend time on our back porch," she said of their pre-Civil War farmhouse on an acre backed by woods. "He'll put on a Pirates game on the television back there, throw some burgers on the grill and enjoy some quiet time. That's typical for Tom."

Corbett was born June 17, 1949, in Philadelphia. His family moved to Harrisburg when he was 1 year old, then to Shaler when he was in first grade, so his father, an attorney, could work on eminent domain legal issues for construction of Pittsburgh's Civic Arena, Three Rivers Stadium and Allegheny Center Mall.

Growing up, Corbett figured he one day would be a lawyer like his father. At Shaler Area High School, he took a job as the school mascot, a Husky.

"They needed someone, and they asked, so I said yes."

He worked as a lifeguard for four years at the nearby Kiwanis Swimming Pool and taught swimming lessons. To this day, he said, people remind him that he taught them how to swim.

"The day I took that lifeguarding job, I started tossing all the troublemakers out of the pool immediately," Corbett said. "If you're going to be a tough guy, you have to do it right from the beginning. It's hard to be nice and then go back and be tough. That's a good life lesson."

He joined the bowling club in high school, a group he remembers gathering with on Nov. 22, 1963, in disbelief of President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

Corbett had no political aspirations then.

If someone had told his high school buddies that he would run for governor one day, he said, they would have asked: "What are you smoking?"

'More ambitious things'

After high school graduation, Corbett headed to Lebanon Valley College, where as a sophomore political science major, he met freshman English major Sue Manbeck from Schuylkill County.

Jim Biery, a Phi Lambda Sigma fraternity brother in 1967, described Corbett as a serious student and talented lacrosse player who knew how to have fun -- within reason.

"The whole world was changing back then, in the late '60s, and we were figuring out how to adjust to that," said Biery, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Bankers Association, an industry trade group. "We'd have our parties and drink some Budweisers and listen to Motown. That's what college kids did then.

"But Tom was always more careful than the rest of us. I think he always had the goal in mind to be successful and to move on to more ambitious things."

Corbett took a job teaching civics in Pine Grove School District in Schuylkill County while Sue finished her final year of college. They married in December 1972 and moved to San Antonio, where Corbett pursued his law degree at St. Mary's University. She worked in a law firm to support them.

In 2 1/2 years, his law degree in hand, they headed home to Pittsburgh. Allegheny County's district attorney hired Corbett as a prosecutor.

Dick Goldberg, an assistant district attorney who was in the training class with him in 1976, said Corbett stated lofty goals from the start.

"We were in class, and he said one day he'd like to be attorney general or U.S. attorney," Goldberg recalled. "I said, 'Well, that's big.' It was like saying you want to be president one day. But he was serious. And he did it."

In 1988, then-President George H.W. Bush appointed Corbett as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, a position he held until 1993.

"Tom's a people person," said attorney J. Alan Johnson, who worked with Corbett in that office. "He is bright, energetic and personable."

Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey A. Manning met Corbett when both were in the DA's office in the 1980s. They were co-counsel on a cocaine smuggling case in 1981 in Erie. There they met Tom Ridge, an assistant district attorney who became Pennsylvania's 43rd governor and the country's first head of Homeland Security.

"Tom is a joyful, fun-loving guy, and he never makes fun of anyone but himself," Manning said. "I think we all knew the stars would align for him."

In 1995, Ridge appointed Corbett to fill the unexpired term of state Attorney General Ernie Preate, who was indicted on federal charges for mail fraud and served 16 months in prison.

Senate Democrats, led by then-powerful Philadelphian Vince Fumo, refused to vote for Corbett, publicly questioning his ability to be independent of a governor for whom he actively campaigned.

Fumo, now serving a federal prison sentence for corruption, is said to have described Corbett as "too much of a Boy Scout," and decried on the Senate floor when senators confirmed Corbett: "While this is a great day for some, it is a bad day for most."

He served for two years, then returned to the office when elected in 2004.

In August 2008, former Deputy Attorney General Thomas D. Kimmett filed a federal whistle-blower lawsuit claiming violation of his constitutional rights. Kimmett said Corbett and other administrators impeded his attempts to correct inefficiencies in the office's financial enforcement section.

In a March deposition taken for the case, Corbett said he relies heavily on his managers to make decisions, but noted, "I always remind them, 'No surprises.'"

State Rep. Mike Vereb, R-Montgomery County, a police officer in West Conshohocken when he met Corbett, defends him as "honest and credible."

"If he says it's going to rain, I'm bringing an umbrella to work that day," Vereb said. "He's humble, too. The only difference between the job he had and that of governor is the desk he'll sit behind."

Shaler police Chief Jeff Galley said that as attorney general, Corbett tried to help law enforcement agencies. "Whether it's a major drug supplier or a nickel-and-dime dope case, they are the same to Tom," Galley said. "He brings the same enthusiasm."

The Corbetts raised two children in Shaler: Tom, who is obtaining a second graduate degree in entertainment technology from Carnegie Mellon University, and Katherine, an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia who married a police officer in May.

Though they live in a Harrisburg apartment because of Corbett's job, Sue Corbett said the couple never considered leaving Pittsburgh.

"It's home," she said.

When in Shaler, Corbett greets everyone he sees, said township Commissioner Dave Shutter, who served on the board with him in the 1980s and was principal of the high school when Corbett's son attended.

"If you run into him at Giant Eagle or see him driving through the neighborhood, he stops and takes the time to ask you how you are," said Shutter.

Asked what he likes to do when he's in Pittsburgh, Corbett mentions visits to the Pleasure Bar and Tessaro's in Bloomfield and Aspinwall Grille. Then he pauses and laughs: "I just realized I only mentioned places to eat."

He typically reads mysteries when he has time to read a book, and if he watches TV, he almost always chooses a sporting event or Fox News. As he traveled the state in recent months campaigning, his iPod cranked out music from the 1960s, '70s and '80s, including the occasional song by Santana.

"And Willie Nelson," Corbett said. "I don't agree with his politics, but I like his music."

At a campaign stop in State College last week, Corbett praised his wife for helping him achieve success.

"She is very patient with me, and she does the bulk of the work" at home, he said, taking her hand. "She's my best friend."

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