Two US Senators from Holy Cross in the new Congress

Former RI Governor Edward DiPrete was Holy Cross Class of 1955. He served as governor from 1985 to 1991. He later spent part of his retirement in prison after having pleaded guilty to corruption charges involving the awarding of state contracts.

At 85, DiPrete savors his real legacy: Family

Mark Patinkinmpatinki@providencejournal.com




Ed DiPrete is 85 now, in the winter of his life, but I found him clear-minded in his new home at Chapel View condominiums in Cranston.



Of course, Cranston.

It’s where DiPrete was born the youngest of five sons to an immigrant dad, rose to mayor of the city and then Republican governor.

Ironically, Cranston remained his home even when he served 11 months there in the Adult Correctional Institutions.

“I feel good, except for my legs,” DiPrete told me.

He had a left knee replacement, and his right one is giving him trouble now, too.

It has slowed him a bit, but he still sees family almost every day. That’s his lifeline.

It’s a big clan, the DiPretes — he has seven children and 20 grandkids, and he remains their beloved patriarch.

But he came across as the same everyman that he was known for as governor.



The Winnebago governor.



Anyone around for his tenure from 1985 to 1991 might remember that.

Even in office, he went on family trips in a Winnebago.

One of his daughters, Mary Ellen, in her 50s, was with DiPrete when I stopped by, visiting from her home in Orlando where her husband, RISD grad David Murray, had a career as a Disney animator.

I asked Mary Ellen if it’s true her dad used to park the Winnebago in McDonald’s lots so they could all have breakfast there in the morning.

She laughed and confirmed it.

Those trips, she said, were one reason the family’s still close. Mary Ellen calls such bonding her dad’s best legacy, remembering the time in 1990 that he canceled a White House request to represent the U.S. in Romania to attend her master’s degree graduation at Boston University.

A child’s milestone, he told her, was more important.

I was at first anxious about bringing up prison with his daughter there, but I could tell the two were open about the storms they’ve been through.

So I asked if DiPrete’s serving time affected the way the family sees him.

Not one bit, said Mary Ellen.

“So many people who’ve achieved success have discord in the family,” she told me. “But the kids all love their grandpa for who he is to them. We support each other through the ups and downs.”

Her son Brandon, who’s 23, 6-foot-7 and played Division-I baseball at the University of South Florida in Tampa, recently spent three weeks with DiPrete in the condo just to be with his granddad.


Mary Ellen, an art teacher, now gives private lessons in Florida so that she has the flexibility to see her dad.

That’s often what fills DiPrete’s days — visits from family.

He’s been alone since July 2011, when he lost his wife of 56 years, Pat.

They began dating when he was at Holy Cross and she a nurse at St. Joseph’s.


In her late 60s, Pat began to struggle with a degenerative nerve disease. DiPrete was her chief caregiver in their home on Wilbur Avenue in western Cranston — the one built by his dad in 1968.

After he lost Pat at age 76, he decided to downsize.

“I miss her terribly,” he told me. “I have pictures everywhere. I sit here and I look at her.”

DiPrete wakes most days around 7 a.m., then watches local news for an hour or two. He eats a breakfast of bacon, toast, black coffee and eggs, sunny-side up.

Mary Ellen laughed and said her dad is a creature of habit — same breakfast for the last 50 years.

“Mary Ellen eats healthy,” DiPrete said. “I’m a meat and potatoes man.”

Often, his adult children, including Dennis, who runs DiPrete Engineering, and Thomas, an attorney, will take their dad to an early dinner, usually at Avvio Ristorante in Garden City or the Chapel Grille.

DiPrete used to spend a lot of time out with friends like legendary CCRI basketball coach Vin Cullen, whom he’s known since the two were altar boys at St. Ann Church.



But DiPrete nods at his bad knee and says that with everyone aging, they get together less.

He’s often recognized when out and says people are kind and supportive. He laughed and told me some say things like, “Considering some of the crap they put you through, you look okay.”

I told him he seemed more at peace since I last interviewed him a decade ago. I remember him then having the look of someone unsure of how he’d be received.

I asked him now about that.

“It takes some of the spunk out of you,” he said of prison.

The whole prosecution was a draining ride — he was indicted in 1994 for taking bribes for state contracts, with all charges dismissed in 1997 by a judge who accused prosecutors of misconduct. But the charges were refiled in 1998.





DiPrete still claims people in his campaign did the shakedowns and later, given immunity, blamed him.

But he’d spent over $1 million on legal fees and was out of money. A plea, his lawyer said, would get him only a year to serve, with related charges dropped against one of his sons.

“We’d fought the battle as best as we could,” he told me. “It was the lesser of two evils.”

On Dec. 29, 1998, at age 64, the former Navy lieutenant commander, mayor and governor reported to the ACI at 7 a.m. to serve his time, going from the State House to inmate No. 11156 in a cell with two roommates.

Mary Ellen remembers everyone being together at DiPrete’s Cranston home that Christmas, knowing their dad and granddad was about to lose his freedom.

“It wasn’t a happy time,” she said, “but we got though it together.”

She was pregnant that day, but told me she now holds to a happier memory. Eleven months later, the day DiPrete got out, he drove south to see Mary Ellen in Florida and hold his new granddaughter, Sophia, born while he was in prison.

“I took a picture,” said Mary Ellen. “I look at that picture every day. It makes you realize what’s important in life.”

I asked him about his proudest legacy as governor.

He was a Republican with a heavily Democratic General Assembly, but DiPrete said he reached so hard across the aisle that his first two budgets were passed unanimously.





“I wish there was that kind of cooperation in the country today,” he said. “It’s so unnecessary, the bickering back and forth.”

As he walked me to the door, I noticed photos everywhere of DiPrete with dignitaries, including at Kennebunkport next to George H.W. Bush.

“You’ve led quite a life,” I told him.

He looked at Mary Ellen and said at 85, the legacy he cares about more is family.

At that, his daughter asked if he wanted to go St. Ann’s cemetery to visit Pat that afternoon.

It was cold, but the sun was out and it would be a beautiful day to visit.



Ed DiPrete’s eyes were briefly far away, and he nodded.

Yes, he said, he’d like that very much.



Mark Patinkin’s columns run Sundays and Wednesdays.



— mpatinki@providencejournal.com



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