Old pals are Tri-City movers and shakers

KENNEWICK--The two old men sit elbow to elbow at the interview, the closest of friends for nearly 50 years.

Two Tri-City paesanos.

Sam Volpentest was 45 when he left his hometown of Seattle in 1949 with a wife and three children and came to Southeastern Washington. He intended to be a grocer but became a tavern owner instead.

A year earlier, 34-year-old Dr. Albert Corrado was a general practitioner in Pittsburgh, searching want ads in professional journals for a way to escape hard winters and 80-hour work weeks. Richland gave him a chance for a new climate, a new start and a 40-hour work week.

And so it began half a century ago, a couple of guys with Italian heritage from opposite ends of the country whose lives intersected in the Tri-Cities.

Best of friends now, Volpentest and Corrado meet each Sunday to attend Mass at Christ the King Catholic Church, then they go out to brunch at the Edgewater Hanford House in Richland, where they sometimes reminisce about how good their mamas' pasta was.

Volpentest, 96, bought and sold more than half a dozen taverns in Richland in the early years but eventually found a niche in the world of politics. It catapulted him into a realm that pulsed with power.

His office today at the Tri-City Industrial Development Council in Kennewick is walled with photographic evidence. There's Sam with U.S. Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson. And there's Sam with U.S. Sen. Warren Magnuson.

Pictures packed with political import smother the three walls and include those of U.S. presidents spanning four decades. And then there're plaques by the dozen. And there sits Volpentest, a man of great accomplishment and modest stature, behind a desk suitable for a powerful politician, smiling politely as if his 96 years held no big achievements.

Over in Richland, Corrado occupies a corner office on the second floor of the medical professional building next to Kadlec Medical Center that bears his name. There are a few plaques, some family pictures and a couple of framed documents that prove he is licensed to practice medicine.

It is a very ordinary-looking office with a high bookshelf sagging from the load and a couple of writing desks. There is no computer, but the view out the windows takes in a sweeping vista of the community he and his friend helped nurture into the millennium.

Helped to build hospital

Corrado shrugs off the fact that the Corrado Medical Building bears his name. It is an honor bestowed on the chairman of the fund-raising committee that helped build the hospital in 1970.

"I don't own it, and I do pay rent," he said with a smile. Never mind that the wall opposite the first-floor elevators bears a portrait of Corrado embedded into its polished surface.

Corrado, now 86, is losing his eyesight, but not his love for medicine. Like Volpentest, he puts in as regular a work week as he can handle, mostly to do research on chronic fatigue syndrome.

A friendship is born

The two first met 49 years ago when Volpentest's wife needed care for an allergy. Corrado, who was hired by General Electric to be the senior internist in Richland during the days when the town was still company-owned and run, was the designated allergist, although he had no specific medical training in that field.

Their wives soon met and became bridge partners. And their friendship followed.

A few years into their casual friendship, Volpentest was diagnosed with cancer in 1957. A specialist cut it out, taking Volpentest's lower jawbone in the process.

Recovery was painful and slow. The next few years were tough on the tavern owner. But a close friend, former Tri-City Herald Publisher Glenn Lee, suggested community involvement as an antidote for depression. Soon after, as president of the Richland Chamber of Commerce, Volpentest was in the thick of local and state politics.

The timing was fortuitous for the Tri-Cities because in the early 1960s the federal government was considering closing down nuclear activities at Hanford, which would have been a death knell for the economy. But Volpentest had connections in the right places.

He had belonged to the same athletic club in Seattle as Gov. Albert Rosellini, and his uncle was a good friend of Magnuson, the powerful Washington Democrat.

Volpentest had given away beer at his Frontier bar in Richland during a rally for Rosellini's re-election effort in 1956. And Volpentest was in Ritzville in February 1963 when Jackson, Washington's other powerful Democrat, met with regional leaders to confirm the rumor that Hanford's days were numbered.

"That meeting resulted in what today is TRIDEC," said Volpentest. "After we formed (TRIDEC), we hired a firm in Washington, D.C., to help develop more nuclear projects and diversify our economy."

Magnuson was just the man Volpentest needed.

"He used to say all the time that the closest path to a politician is your pocketbook," Volpentest recalls.

Benefits for the Tri-Cities

Remarkably, Volpentest parlayed his favors for politicians into trump cards that resulted in the Tri-Cities' excellent highway system, earned Richland All-American City status, resurrected some nuclear projects at Hanford, brought the Fast Flux Testing Facility research reactor to town and, most amazing of all, got Richland a seven-story federal building.

President Kennedy even came to town to dedicate the N Reactor steam plant at Hanford, another notch in Volpentest's achievement stick.

"He was always going for something big," Corrado said. "The more you get involved with Sam, the more you become involved with raising money. He's not afraid to talk to anybody. He was always raising money for politicians. ... Sam is a born salesman."

Some of that sales schmooze rubbed off on Corrado. He was named chairman of the fund-raising committee for the $1 million Kadlec hospital project in 1970. He persuaded 29 doctors to put in $10,000 each.

"It was Sam who made me a fund-raiser. I hate fund raising," Corrado said.

In the ensuing years, Volpentest and Corrado each became more deeply engaged in making the Tri-Cities a better place. Volpentest got into banking, and both men at times held seats on the board of regents for Gonzaga University.

The amount of "brick and mortar" assets, not to mention the federal and private enterprises that have provided thousands of jobs to the Tri-Cities in the past four decades, thanks to Corrado and Volpentest, is impossible to calculate, said Karen McGinnis, director of the HAMMER Training and Education Center in Richland.

Volpentest received the Tri-Citian of the Year award from the Rotarians in 1963. Corrado collected the tribute in 1993. Ironically, Corrado's least-known contribution for the benefit of humanity is one of his greatest.

In 1949, he noticed that the first signs of a cold were just like hay fever. He got the idea to add aspirin to a cold medication called chlortrimeton.

His suggestion to a pharmaceutical company became a product known today as Coricidin. But the good doctor got nothing for his idea, no royalties, not even credit for the name.

"Locally we called it Corradox," Corrado said, smiling.

One Democrat, one Republican

Politically, the two men are opposites, Volpentest leans Democratic, while Corrado is a Republican.

"I'm viewed as a Democrat because the people I've supported have been Democrats. But I'm an independent, although nobody around here will believe it," Volpentest said.

Even so, the number of powerful Democrats who have been in Volpentest's Rolodex is impressive. In addition to Magnuson and Jackson, he often talked with former House Speaker Tom Foley.

Volpentest's chutzpah in getting access to people in powerful places is legendary. On one trip to Pittsburgh about 40 years ago, Volpentest invited himself on a morning walk around the block with Vice President Richard Nixon.

"I was trying to get Westinghouse to bring industry out here," he said.

And where was Volpentest when Kennedy was nominated for president at the 1960 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles? Yep, Volpentest, still recovering from that surgery on his jaw, was with Jackson, an odds-on favorite for the No. 2 place on the Democratic ticket.

"I walked with the senator from our hotel to Kennedy's hotel the morning after Kennedy was nominated for president. John was a close friend of the Jacksons. I could see it in (Scoop's) face. He was crushed. Kennedy had picked Lyndon Johnson," Volpentest said.

Closer than friends

With half a century of stories to tell between them, Corrado and Volpentest have become the story itself. At a recent interview together, Corrado looked at his longtime friend and said: "I don't have any close friends. I consider Sam as my brother."

"I feel the same way," returned Volpentest. "Our wives got along. He's a good man. I trust him."

About the only time anyone has seen the two paesanos disagree is on Sunday mornings when they dine out. "They fight over the check," said Michael Torres, who frequently serves their table at the Hanford House.

"They are very giving in their friendship," he noted.

McGinnis said Volpentest is virtually an icon at the Volpentest HAMMER Training and Education Center. "When he is out here, people want to meet him," she said.

It's no wonder. HAMMER is a one-of-a-kind facility to train personnel for virtually any kind of emergency, and Volpentest lobbied federal lawmakers to get it.

Sen. Ted Kennedy was the man to talk to, and Volpentest had his number.

"He's a political strategist," McGinnis said.

About eight years ago, she said, Norm Dicks, the powerful Washington congressman who serves on the Appropriations Committee, was having a $250-a-plate dinner in his quest for re-election.

"That's a lot of money. But Sam said, `You've got to go. This is how to get HAMMER,'" she said. Richland got HAMMER.

"His sense of timing is uncanny," says Corrado.

About five years ago, when Volpentest reached his 90s, some people thought he would be a candidate for retirement. But Volpentest would have none of it and is still pulling favors for the Tri-Cities when he can.

But the two see themselves as just a couple of average guys who have come to love the Tri-Cities.

"It's a place that grows on you," said Volpentest. "I think Sam and I are both attention-deficit disorder. We're never satisfied with what we're doing."

"But I don't want people to get the wrong idea that I do this to help the community," joked Corrado. "I do it because I like doing it."