Days passed. Rampton was getting a little riled. Finally, the phone rang. "About time," Rampton muttered. Then, "Yes, Mr. President?"

"Cal," Johnson huffed. "Where's Alta, Utah?" It's a ski resort east of Salt Lake City, Rampton said.

"Well," said Johnson, "[Defense Secretary] Bob McNamara is snowed in up there. I need him in Washington. Get him out, damn it."

Click.

Rampton, 93, in hospice with an inoperable kidney tumor, laughed as he told that old story Wednesday and acknowledged, "I don't have long to go."

But Rampton, reclining on his elevated bed in slacks and a shirt, felt well enough Wednesday to spend an hour reminiscing about his political wars and his 12 years in the governor's office. Even though he left office 30 years ago, his stature in Utah's Democratic circles remains undiminished.

Rampton, the only Utah governor to serve three full terms, is known for reinventing state government, modernizing Utah's system of higher education and putting together its first ambitious economic development plan.

And he's still a member of the self-named Damned Old Democrats (DOD) Club; he went to its weekly luncheon meeting at the Alta Club just two weeks ago.

Alta Club manager Bill Shorter tells this story: Rampton always sat at a table in front of a big window facing the intersection of South Temple and State Street.

"Then the state Republican Party moved its headquarters to a ground-level office in the Eagle Gate Building across the street," Shorter said. "Cal changed his seat to the other side of the table so his back would be to the Republican Party."

State Democratic Chairman Wayne Holland went to one of those DOD meetings shortly after he took over the party's helm. Many in the group said the Democrats needed to resort to the same "negative, 'dirty tricks' " they claimed Republicans had used successfully in state and national campaigns.

"Rampton put an end to that," Holland said. "He said, 'We'll win with our integrity, or we'll lose with our integrity, but we'll still have our integrity,' "

In 1976, Rampton resisted running for a fourth term, instead mentoring and promoting his friend and fellow Democrat Scott M. Matheson, to succeed him. True to form, he couldn't help but take a few shots at Matheson's opponents in both parties.

Asked who he feels was Utah's best governor, not counting himself, Rampton called it a tie: "Scott Matheson and [Republican] Norm Bangerter [who succeeded Matheson in 1985].

"I admired Bangerter because he had the guts to raise taxes, despite the consequences politically, when public education was badly underfunded," he said.

A visitor who stopped by asked about another Democratic governor, Herbert Maw, who served in the 1940s, because she had worked with Maw. "Well, he was a nice man," Rampton said with the disarming honesty that endeared him to political allies and foes alike. He and his visitor shared a laugh.

She was one of four people who came in to see Rampton during that hour. He said people often drop in, many of them compatriots in the political trenches of the 1960s and '70s.

Rampton was a fiercely partisan Democrat, and has always said he is proud of that. But some of his dearest friends in politics were on the other side of the aisle, he said, and at day's end, Republicans and Democrats could put their differences aside and remain amicable.

"It's different now," he said. "I don't know why. I don't know what has caused this animosity, this ugliness. But it's too bad."

Rampton counts as his greatest accomplishment the reorganization of state government into a streamlined system with more accountability between administrators and employees - which he said he never could have accomplished without the cooperation of several GOP legislators.

"We created with legislation the Little Hoover Commission," he said. "That commission was charged with studying the organization of state government and coming up with recommendations to improve it. That was passed in my first year, with a Democratic-controlled Legislature."

But two years later, when the commission completed its work and its recommendations again required legislative approval, Republicans were in charge of the Legislature.

"I had great help from Republican legislators. But the ones who stand out were three respected Republican senators - Hughes Brockbank, Warren Pugh and Wally Gardner," he said.

At the time, there were 157 state agencies that were supposed to report directly to the governor. "It was unworkable," he said.

So the reorganization created an 11-member cabinet and the 157 agencies were apportioned to those 11 departments. Agency heads reported to and took orders from their cabinet member, who then reported to the governor.

"It greatly improved accountability and efficiency," Rampton said.

He also is credited with modernizing higher education by pushing through a $75 million bond to improve the physical facilities at Utah's universities and colleges.

"Simply put, Cal Rampton is responsible for the creation of the University of Utah in its present form," said retired political science professor Sam Rich, and a member of the DOD .

Utah's 11th governor also is credited with expanding the tax base and revenue flow through a coordinated economic development program to attract new business to the state.

A band of business leaders known as "Rampton's Raiders" would scour the country extolling Utah's virtues and luring companies to expand or relocate to the state.

In fact, the idea of applying to be the host of the Winter Olympics was hatched in 1965 during strategy sessions involving Rampton, former Salt Lake Tribune publisher Jack Gallivan and Max Rich, a business leader and friend since their infancy ("He walked before I did and never let me forget it," Rampton said).

"It was felt that if we were the United States nominee, it would showcase our ski industry and enhance tourism," Rampton said. "My only fear was that we'd get it."

Respected as a tough, no-nonsense politician and leader, Rampton, along with Lucybeth, his wife of nearly 64 years (she died in 2004), also was known for his human side.

One act of generosity occurred in 1970, when the Governor's Mansion was located on the other side of City Creek Canyon from the State Capitol, near Shriners Hospital.

A young couple who were getting married in the Salt Lake LDS Temple had scheduled their wedding reception at the LDS stake center next door to the mansion. But then they were told that a youth conference had been scheduled at the stake center the same night, so they would have to move their reception to the basement.

A friend of the bride's mother contacted Lucybeth, who offered the mansion.

"That was all Lucybeth," Rampton said. "I just went along with her."

That bride, Joy Daynes, recalled the day in a 1993 interview.

"We were trying to figure out what to do when my mother received a call from Lucybeth Rampton,'' she said. "She had heard of our dilemma and offered their home, the Governor's Mansion, for our reception.

"The amazing thing to us is that, not only did the Ramptons not know us personally, my parents were staunch Republicans. They turned their home over to us and our 400 guests and went out for the evening.''