Tom Korologos — a son of Greek immigrants to Salt Lake City and a former journalist who became an adviser to several U.S. presidents, a powerful Capitol Hill lobbyist and U.S. ambassador to Belgium — died July 26 at his home in Washington, D.C.
Korologos succumbed to heart complications, family members said. He was 91.
Along with a storied 60-year career as a highly respected Republican political aide in Congress and at the White House that won him the moniker of “101st senator,” Korologos is also remembered for coining the Utah ski industry’s signature promotional slogan, “The Greatest Snow on Earth,” some 64 years ago, while working as a sports writer for The Salt Lake Tribune.
His varied political roles often gave him a front-row seat to history. After starting in politics in 1962 as press secretary and administrative assistant to Sen. Wallace F. Bennett, R-Utah, Korologos went on to serve as critical Senate liaison for President Richard Nixon and his immediate successor, Gerald Ford, when the former resigned over the Watergate scandal.
Korologos helped manage nearly 300 U.S. Senate confirmations for the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, vetting, coaching and choreographing prominent Cabinet and court nominees such as Alexander Haig, Henry Kissinger and Chief Justice William Rehnquist to pass Senate muster.
After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, Korologos assisted the administration of President George W. Bush in coordinating and overseeing travel to the war-ravaged region for 275 members of Congress who would later vote on funding the effort, while acting as a senior counselor to Paul Bremer, administrator of a provisional government in Baghdad.
As ambassador to Belgium from 2004 to 2007, Korologos would forge lifelong relationships with members of the European country’s royal family, including King Philippe, who was a young crown prince when Korologos and his own family first met him.
Korologos’ first wife, Joy Goff, died in 1997. He later married former Labor Secretary Ann McLaughlin in 2000. With their high political and social profiles, the two were considered one of Washington’s “power couples” in their day. She died in 2022.
(Judy Magid | The Salt Lake Tribune) Tom and Ann Korologos at a dinner celebration for the Greek community in 2005.
His brother, Mike, recalled the family’s beaming pride when Tom first got hired by Sen. Bennett — especially their parents, Chris and Irene Korologos, who ran a popular tavern in Salt Lake City called The Bomb Shelter, near 400 South and State Street.
“Dad’s buttons were popping,” Mike Korologos said Wednesday. “They were both so proud. Here you’ve got the son of a bar owner with a fourth-grade education getting hired by a U.S. senator!
“My brother gave our family so much confidence,” he said. “It’s been a fun life for us, too.”
‘Common touch’
Korologos was born April 6, 1933, earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Utah and started in journalism at the now-defunct Salt Lake Telegram before becoming a copy boy and eventually, sports reporter in The Tribune newsroom, when it was located on Main Street.
Mike Korologos also worked at The Tribune — and he remembered his older brother, then an editor, once firing him on deadline for ostensibly failing to write a decent headline after three attempts.
“He said, ‘This isn’t any good,’ and I said, ‘Write the damn thing yourself,’” the sibling recalled, to which his brother replied: “You’re fired! Get the hell out!”
Their mother called then-Executive Editor Art Deck the next morning with a plea to rehire her son. “Deck just started laughing,” Mike recalled. “He said, ‘Tell him to come in today. He’s back on the job.’ "
Tom Korologos won fellowships to attend Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and went on to work for The New York Herald Tribune, the Long Island Press and The Associated Press before entering politics, the family’s obituary said, with “a dogged determination.”
“He was rambunctious, a bull in a china shop on Red Bull,” his brother said in an interview. “Going in headfirst was a big part of his success. He got his mind set and then he’d just go after it.”
The obituary refers to him as energetic, quick-witted, down-to-earth and personable — qualities that many who knew him would confirm.
“Korologos talked with kings, presidents and baseball Hall of Famers without losing his common touch,” his family wrote. “He loved his country tremendously and had an unquenchable passion for life, which his intellect, creativity, and sharp sense of humor helped him tackle with enviable gusto.”
A different Washington
Korologos also kept undying bonds with members of the Greek communities in Utah and Washington, and helped start a presidential tradition of inviting the archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America to the White House each year for Greek Independence Day celebrations. He attended the occasion in May with President Joe Biden.
His son, Philip, said those ties were also part of why a fellow Greek, Spiro Agnew, vice president to Nixon, would return his phone calls back in the day — part of an impressive fabric of personal connections Korologos built and maintained across the nation’s capital when it was a more social and close-knit place.
Philip and his older sister, Ann, sometimes tagged along while Korologos worked at the White House on Saturdays. He recalled seeing Kissinger sitting in a barber chair and shaking hands with President Ford as he walked to a helicopter to fly to an Army-Navy football game. The son also recounted many an evening that Korologos spent socializing in congressional offices with folks from both political parties.
“As my dad would put it, this was before the information age,” said Korologos’ son, who is an attorney with the New York firm Boies Schiller Flexner. “You had to get to know people to know what was going on. It was far more collegial, and you had smoke-filled rooms that got things done.”
Fated and feted headline
Korologos penned the famous “Greatest Snow on Earth” line in 1960 while he was ski editor and producing an edition of The Tribune’s Sunday Home magazine, according to a history by Ski Utah, which promotes the industry. The slogan was later picked up by the Utah Travel Council for tourism promotion.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus — dubbed “The Greatest Show on Earth” — sued over Utah’s usage of the phrase in a copyright case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where justices upheld the state’s right to use it. A copy of that page of The Tribune is now enshrined at the Alf Engen Ski Museum in Park City.
In more recent years, Korologos — a lifelong photographer and avid golfing and ski enthusiast — served as a strategic adviser on international affairs for DLA Piper, a global law firm headquartered in London, and spent time at a vacation home in Aspen, Colorado.
Funeral services will be held at 10 a.m. Monday at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Washington. He is to be interred at the U.S. capital’s Oak Hill Cemetery.