First of all, Atkinson was born in 1921, back when Republican Joseph Hampton Moore, the first mayor elected under the city"s 1919 Charter, held office and long, long before most of today"s eager young vols were even considered, much less conceived.

Atkinson is no bored codger, either. Weeks away from his 82nd birthday, this former chairman of the Chester-based Sun Shipbuilding Company keeps himself insanely busy pursuing a goal he has been chasing for nearly 20 years now.

Back in February Katz visited Society Hill Towers to talk politics with the residents, one of whom was Atkinson. He was instantly charmed.

"I liked the answers Katz came up with at the meeting," Atkinson says over hamburgers at the Wooden Nickel, the Society Hill Sheraton's restaurant, where he is such a frequent patron that everyone greets him, Cheers-like, by his first name.

"Nothing against Street at all," he is quick to add. "But I have been a Republican all my life."

In Atkinson's case, the agenda is white-collar crime, something with which he is intimately familiar.

Atkinson, who used to be president of the Sun Shipbuilding Co. (later to become Pennsylvania Shipbuilding) of Chester, is suing his former employer, and its bank, First Fidelity (now Wachovia), claiming that Sun and the bank conspired to defraud the U.S. Navy out of half a billion dollars.

Not only did the alleged fraud cost the Navy -- which means you and me, dear taxpayers -- but it also helped sink Chester. Sun employed as many as 5,000 people before it was effectively disemboweled in the early '80s.

"The problem with Chester," he says, "is that it has been devastated by the Sun Shipbuilding fraud and frauds like it. Private corporations and their banks and investors are using government contracts to steal. Our enforcement agencies appear to have given up, if not become complicit."

Atkinson says that the discovery phase of the lawsuit, which a U.S. District Court judge allowed to proceed last fall, has provided him with tens of thousands of pages of documents he says show a Reagan-Bush conspiracy to milk Sun to fund covert operations and then cook the books to liquidate the shipyard assets -- all while devastating the local economy.

An attorney representing Penn Ship did not return a phone call. A bank spokesperson denies the allegations. "First Fidelity served as trustee and we are confident there was no wrongdoing on the part of the bank," says Barbara Nate. The Navy is "looking into the matter," according to a spokesman.

After hearing Katz speak, Atkinson wrote him a letter calling his attention "as the potential future mayor of Philadelphia, to the grave breakdown of white-collar crime law enforcement here. In my view this plague has been instrumental in the city's downfall."

Atkinson included a memo relating the Sun saga, the conspiracy allegation and its effect on the greater Philadelphia area.

Time passed and, with no word from Katz, Atkinson sent him an e-mail on April 10. Six days later, Mary Jo Harris, a Katz constituency issues volunteer, returned Atkinson's e-mail, inviting him to volunteer.

"We agree that it is an important problem for the city of Philadelphia and you can be sure that your comments have Sam's attention. The policy and research team here at the Katz Campaign headquarters is studying the issue and its implications."

Sitting in the Wooden Nickel a week after such an encouraging response from the Katz campaign, Atkinson is elated. So is our lunch companion, former HUD undersecretary Catherine Austin Fitts, who has been fighting her own battles against government-sponsored white-collar crime, which she claims has resulted in the disappearance of trillions of tax dollars and the devastation of cities like Philly.

That Katz is paying attention is a sure sign, they say, that Atkinson's decades-long battle against Sun and its bank have not been in vain. Getting Katz involved makes a very complex issue local, and that will make it easier for voters to grasp and, hopefully, react.

Maureen Garrity, a Katz spokeswoman, tells me that while "we are happy to have [Atkinson] as a volunteer," that does not mean the campaign is backing the allegations he makes in the lawsuit.

"We understand where he is coming from," Garrity says, adding that, so far, Atkinson has yet to report for duty. "We appreciate his perspective, but we get hundreds and hundreds of letters from concerned people who bring up legitimate issues, and as we form policy initiatives, we are taking those concerns under consideration. We are not rating his concerns higher or lower than anyone else's concerns."

The Katz campaign is working on position papers, says Garrity, who, at this point, does not want to say what those positions might be or which would be released first.

Here's hoping Atkinson's suit becomes a campaign issue. The city -- and the nation -- will benefit mightily with the sun shining on Sun.