Edward D. DiPrete, carrying a few belongings, leaves the Adult Correctional Institutions on Dec. 4, 1999.

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Journal files / JOHN FREIDAH

Although it had been 10 years, he was much like the Ed DiPrete I remembered, except perhaps for his eyes. They seem to show hesitation now, as if he is unsure how he’ll be received.

I addressed him as governor and he welcomed me into the Cranston home where he raised seven children and once hosted a president. After 40 years, he is ready to say goodbye to it. It’s just him and his wife, Patricia, these days, and she is ill, so it’s time to downsize.

I had been trying to interview him since he became the first Rhode Island governor to go to prison for crimes in office. In 1998, well after his third term ended, he pleaded guilty to steering state contracts to political donors. He served almost a year at the ACI. It was an astonishing fall for one of the state’s most prominent leaders.

Several times since then, I reached out to DiPrete, and he came close to agreeing to chat, even sending me e-mails. But he was wary of the public spotlight.

A few weeks ago, I tried again. This time, he said yes.

I had always liked Edward DiPrete, finding him an unusual politician, an everyman in a world of theatrical personalities. He loved his Winnebago, and even as governor would take his family to Disneyworld in it, overnighting in McDonalds parking lots so they could have breakfast there.

His Cranston house is an 11-room, tree-shaded colonial, spotless inside, the walls hung with photos of DiPrete with presidents and other luminaries. There is a pool out back he keeps up for his 20 grandchildren.

He is 74 now, but looks younger. There was no one else in the house this day. A caregiver, he explained, had taken his wife to the Cranston Senior Center for lunch with friends. Pat, 73, has a neurological illness called progressive supranuclear palsy. It causes muscle, speech and balance problems, and she now relies on a walker. It’s another reason they plan to move; it would be best to find a home without steps.

“She’s had a number of falls,” DiPrete said. “She’s broken two wrists, an ankle and cracked a rib. But she’s very resilient. She bounces back.”

Looking after Pat has become the biggest part of DiPrete’s life. When it’s just the two of them, he has to be on constant alert, hurrying from the kitchen if she’s trying to stand from a chair in the next room.

“One of my kids asked, ‘How much of the week do you spend taking care of mom?’ I think it boiled down to about 85 hours it’s just she and I.”

He picks up Pat’s many prescriptions, and orders groceries through the online Peapod delivery service. During his free time, he tries to stay active socially. Every Tuesday, he said, he has dinner at Twin Oaks with his friend George Carello, a retired Cranston police major. He mentioned other friends, among them Dick and Janice Varone.

“Only in Rhode Island,” said DiPrete. “Dick and I played in the La Salle band together in the early ’50s.”

DiPrete’s instrument was clarinet. He was in the Holy Cross band, too, and on a lark, with Dick, got free passage once on a Holland America cruise to Europe in return for playing on the deck.

I spotted a clarinet on a nearby table, and he walked me over to it.

“I took it out two weeks ago,” he said, “probably the first time in 10 years.”

Nearby, he showed me a cabinet of memorabilia, pointing to a picture of himself with Ted Williams. “There’s my hero,” he said.

Other photos showed him with Nixon, Reagan, Sinatra and the previous pope. He has many shots of George H.W. Bush at his home in 1989, a rare Rhode Island visit by a sitting president. Bush was there to raise money for DiPrete’s last run for governor. It brought up a favorite memory.

The two were on one side of the house, heading to meet the crowd in DiPrete’s living room, when Bush saw an arcade-size Pac-Man game. The president asked what it was.

DiPrete explained, and the two started in — the president of the United States and the governor of Rhode Island playing Pac Man while the Secret Service looked on. Finally, DiPrete said, “Mr. President, not to interrupt you, but there are a few hundred people who paid money to come see you.”

He took me to an upstairs hallway where a daughter had created a silhouette of DiPrete from newspaper clippings. One of the articles, from 1987, was about a Market Opinion Research survey that found he had an 89-percent approval rating, the highest of any American governor in a decade.

“A few years later,” DiPrete said, “the guillotine. I got practically run out of town.” He was speaking of his guilty plea to 18 counts of bribery, extortion and embezzlement.

I took the opening and asked him about it. What was prison like?

HE SERVED 11 months and five days.

On Dec. 29, 1998, at age 64, having been governor for three terms until 1990, DiPrete reported to the Adult Correctional Institutions’ intake center. He was due at 9 a.m. but got there at 7 to avoid the media. His three adult sons, a lawyer, an engineer and a safety instructor, came with him for support. They parked by the gate and embraced their father.

“We’ll get through this,” he told them. “Take good care of your mother.”

He would later describe it as the lowest day of his life.

“To be just put in a room,” he said. “You lose your liberty. It was an environment I had never seen, let alone been on the wrong side of.”

His cell was small; he guesses 12 feet by 6. “A bed, a toilet, if you want to call it a bed. A piece of metal about two feet wide with a thin mattress. They don’t claim to be the Marriott or the Hyatt.”

After four days, he was moved to minimum security, assigned a larger room with two other inmates in their 30s. DiPrete got one of the lower bunks.

In some ways, it was almost worse that he was only two miles from his home. “I might as well have been two million miles away,” he said.

He was issued khaki slacks and a khaki shirt. His number was 11156. He never asked his cellmates why they were in.

“I just didn’t think it was right for me to go ask somebody,” he said, though he knew many in minimum are there for drug violations.

Early on, a guard captain told him people would be watching how he was treated.

“I said, ‘Captain,’ ” DiPrete recalled, “ ‘if the rule is I can only ask for one pencil, I’m not going to ask for two.’ ”

No one, guard or inmate, ever said anything negative to him.

DiPrete’s was one of 20 or so rooms on the corridor. None of them had doors. He spent a total of five or six hours a day in his room, on and off. He would read, and often write letters as he sat on his bunk. Especially after dinner, he would be in there with his cellmates. They would share stories about their day on work release, or the three would just chat. One of them had a TV, and together, they would watch sports, news or Friends. A few times, they asked DiPrete about his experiences in politics. What was it like, they wanted to know, to meet the president at the White House? DiPrete said it was an amazing experience, but at the same time, President Bush was down to earth.

He soon began work-release at his family’s Cranston insurance agency, but after five days a judge said a convict can’t be placed in that business. Three later job prospects were denied — one from a development firm because an ex-banker in the prison system was working there and authorities didn’t want two felons at the same site.

Then he was denied early parole.

There was no formal programming for DiPrete while he waited almost six months for an approved work-release situation. He would wake each morning around 6:15, and stroll to a common area nearby where one of the inmates with a hot pot always had water boiling for others to use. DiPrete would start his day by opening a packet of instant coffee and making himself a cup. Once a week, he was able to order special store items, like stationery or doughnuts, but often that privilege was canceled without explanation. He was allowed to receive visitors from a short list. He answered mail, read books and did his laundry. Mostly, the hours dragged.

DiPrete didn’t form prison friendships, but got along with everyone. Sometimes, a dozen of them would watch a baseball game in the common room. The conversation was usually about release dates. Background didn’t matter, said DiPrete; everyone felt they were in this together.

He kept a running calculation of his time served by percentage. At around four months, he wrote down 33 percent served, 67 percent to go. It was a big moment when he passed the halfway point, and was able to put down 49 percent left.

In mid-May, a warehouse owner offered DiPrete a job that he was allowed to take. It was his first time beyond the walls in months. It felt strange. He found himself checking gasoline prices to mark how things had changed.

Finally, on Dec. 4, 1999, Pat DiPrete signed her husband out of minimum and the ex-governor was free.

I asked if prison changed him.

“To say the very least, it knocks the spunk out of you,” DiPrete said. “It’s like you had an eight-cylinder car and someone took out four cylinders. It took the drive out of me.”

While in politics, he had been happy to work late hours, and go to all kinds of events. Prison changed that.

“When I say you lose your spunk,” DiPrete said, “that’s synonymous with confidence.”

The first few years, he mostly just went to work at his son Dennis’ real estate business, helping to do property management. When out on errands, the former governor would simply stare straight ahead.

“Unless you said, ‘Hello, Ed,’ I’d walk past you,” he recalled. “I didn’t want to risk anyone saying, ‘Did you do it? Serves you right.’ ”

A number of moments hurt him, like the time he went to a governor’s conference and media critics said he should be embarrassed to show his face. Another time, someone mailed him an anonymous letter calling him an Italian ethnic slur.

One day, while out on an errand, DiPrete spotted Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson. He had appointed her to the District Court and was proud to later see her named the first African-American woman on the state Superior Court. He was surprised when she made the effort to warmly approach him.

He began to get out more, and found folks were friendly.

TODAY, DiPrete is retired. Pat’s 1999 attempt to claim his $50,777 pension, revoked for dishonorable service, was denied by a judge. Five years later, the Supreme Court sent the case to be retried on whether Pat was an innocent spouse. But the DiPrete family felt a public hearing would be too hard for Pat, who had been under a psychiatrist’s care. They dropped it.

DiPrete and his wife now get by with the support of their children. He calls his family his saving grace.

“We were always close,” he said, “but if anything, the events of the ’90s brought us closer.”

The day after we first talked, I met him again to accompany him to the grocery store. He was wearing an old White House tie-clasp given him by the senior George Bush.

Because of a life in Cranston politics, he said, more passersby call him mayor than governor. He won his first election to City Hall with 50.1 percent of the vote, and the next with 83 percent. He served two terms on the School Committee, two on the City Council, two as mayor and three as governor, leaving public office the day before the notorious state banking crisis broke on Jan. 1, 1991.

He loves Cranston, and seems to know every block of it, telling stories as he drives. He talked of meeting Pat on the bus that took him to La Salle Academy and her to St. Xavier. He spoke of his years in the Navy, and his decade in the reserves. He still gets mail addressed to Lt. Cmdr. Edward D. DiPrete and said he could have been happy in a military career.

We headed into Stop & Shop. As he picked out peaches and tomatoes, I asked his proudest achievement as governor.

His first two years, he was told he was the only executive in memory to not ask for a supplemental budget to cover overruns. He’s proud of small victories like helping start what’s now called the College Crusade of Rhode Island to help low-income kids get into school. And he feels he did a good job cooperating with Democrats, remembering walking into their leaders’ offices, and how stunned they were that he, as governor, had come to them.

Does he ever wish he could have been an elder statesman today?

“That’s ancient history,” he said, adding about prison, “And like I said, it took the wind out of my sails.”

We got into a checkout line. I asked how else he fills his time.

The computer is his biggest hobby. He spends hours researching Pat’s illness. One element of it, he said, is depression, which is in control, but always a concern. His kids worry that he doesn’t take enough time away from caregiving, and last July, they got him to go to Atlantic City.

“I played the two-cent and one-cent slot machines,” said DiPrete. “I wouldn’t play the tables. I wouldn’t know where to start. I never played a table in my life.”

On occasion, he goes to Twin River for an hour or two, before returning to Pat.

“It’s a change of scenery,” said DiPrete. “It puts some excitement into what otherwise might be a boring day.”

He likes visiting his adult children, ranging from a daughter down the block to one in Orlando. At night, after cleaning up dinner, he sits with Pat to watch television. Their favorite sitcom is Everybody Loves Raymond. He also checks into the political shows. In season, DiPrete likes to click back and forth to see how the Red Sox are doing.

He set his few groceries down on the checkout counter. A middle-aged male bagger began to put the items away.

“Hello, Governor,” the man said warmly.

Back in the car, we began to talk about the case.

Despite his admission of guilt, DiPrete still maintains he was innocent.

Of every charge?

“Absolutely,” he said.

The original indictments said he extorted $300,000.

He never embezzled or traded political favors for money?

“No, never. “

He agreed those things happened, but added, “Not by the person charged.”

He said various people in his campaign shook down potential vendors, saying it was coming from DiPrete, and later, with immunity, named him.

I later called Jeff Pine, the state attorney general who brought the case against DiPrete and followed it through to the end.

“The evidence against him was overwhelming,” Pine said. “He pled guilty because he knew he would have been convicted at trial. He knew it and we knew it.”

Earlier, DiPrete had shown me a letter sent him in August 2000 by the Internal Revenue Service, which had launched its own investigation assuming his alleged kickbacks had not been reported as income.

“We are pleased to tell you,” the letter said, “that our examination of your tax returns for the above periods(s) shows no change is necessary in your reported tax.”

DiPrete said the IRS letter proves he never personally profited.

“So when people say, ‘Where is the bribe money?’ ” he said, “there isn’t any.”

To which Pine later responded: “Or else he was successful in hiding it.” Pine said he had no doubt DiPrete personally profited. “None. Zero. Nobody on the prosecution team had any doubt.”

I asked DiPrete why he didn’t make the IRS letter public at the time.

“I didn’t want to go through hell all over again,” he said. “No one would have believed it.”

He remembered the day he decided to plead.

Midmorning on Wednesday, Dec. 9, 1998, with the trial looming, DiPrete was at the family insurance business in Cranston when the phone rang. It was his attorney, Richard Egbert, from a rented office near the Superior Court on Providence’s South Main Street. Pat was there, as well as DiPrete’s three sons and two of his daughters, the other two being out of town.

“They want to talk to you,” said Egbert.

When DiPrete arrived, Egbert told everyone the case was winnable but a jury could go either way. If so, DiPrete’s son Dennis, who was also charged in the case, could miss his children growing up and the elder DiPrete could be gone for a very long time.

Egbert said he could soon have a deal offering DiPrete one year to serve and Dennis a mere $1,000 fine for a campaign finance violation.

“Only a fool would turn down that offer,” Egbert said.

DiPrete resisted.

His children said they didn’t want him to risk a long sentence. They said they wanted him to do what was best for Dennis, and the family. They told him they’d take care of Pat, and the business. They said they loved him.

DiPrete had been fighting this for six years. He was indicted in March of 1994, and thought it was behind him three years later when a judge dismissed the case for “egregious” prosecutorial misconduct in withholding evidence, but the state Supreme Court reinstated it.

By now, the family had spent over $1 million in legal fees. A trial, due to start soon, could cost many times that.

“We were out of money,” DiPrete told me.

He added: “There was a lot of emotion. I had a chance of bringing it to an end or risking God knows what to innocent people.”

He looked around the table.

“OK. I’ll do it.”

Two days later, he admitted to all 18 of the remaining charges.

BY NOW, we had pulled back into his driveway. He turned the car off and stared toward the windshield.

He changed the subject to a long-ago moment captured in a hallway photo he had shown me during my previous visit. It was a shot of DiPrete at then Vice President Bush’s Kennebunkport home in 1987 with top campaign advisers and other governors. Bush was running for the White House. DiPrete listened to the campaign plan and finally asked to speak.

Why, he asked, was there no plan for addressing senior citizens’ needs? Bush’s aides acknowledged they hadn’t focused on that.

“No disrespect,” said DiPrete, “but the election’s only 14 months away.” And Bush would need the senior vote.

Afterward, John Sununu, who would become Bush’s White House chief of staff, told DiPrete, “The boss would like you to join the team.”

“That’s nice,” DiPrete said, “but I’m running for reelection in 1988.”

DiPrete sometimes looks back and wonders what his life would have been like had he said yes. We were still in the driveway. I asked why he decided to talk publicly after all these years. He said that when I reached out to him again for an interview, it got him thinking.

“Someday,” he said, “the good Lord will call me. And I didn’t want to leave this world wishing there was something I’d said but didn’t.”

We both got out of his car.

The ex-governor said the caregiver would not be there much longer so he had to get going.

He had to take care of Pat.

mpatinkin@projo.com