Back when shopping was an event, my old mentor John Gunter ran the legendary Penn Traffic Department Store in Johnstown. John鈥檚 motto was simple: Go big or go home. And when it came to Christmas, he went mega-big. That store was a winter wonderland with wreaths the size of a 1968 Chrysler ...
By Richard Robbins Our political divisions are deep, but the gaps can be bridged with follow through and a willingness to engage. At least that's what Josh Shapiro thinks. The headlines from Tim Alberta's recent article in The Atlantic about the Pennsylvania governor focused on Shapiro's ...
In the late 1990s, I somehow found myself on a plane bound for Bosnia, proof that Congressman John Murtha and Don Zucco, then the mayor of Johnstown, could talk me into anything. Our Johnstown delegation, led by Zucco, was headed to Br膷ko, a city still reeling from the war. As we descended ...
By Richard Robbins Do you realize, or care, that the 2025 calendar jives with calendar year 1941, down to the day? Now, in many ways 1941 was a wonderful year, but it ended in lousy fashion at Pearl Harbor on Sunday, Dec. 7. Among the ways 1941 shone: many credit it as the greatest baseball ...
Q. I don鈥檛 have a question this time. I just wanted to report back. I wrote to you about my family fighting, and you answered me in your column. I showed the column to my parents, like you suggested. A miracle happened. They got all weird, kind of embarrassed. They asked me if I told you my ...
By Richard Robbins It's all well and good for state Sen. Pat Stefano to criticize Penn State University for abandoning its Fayette County branch campus, as he did last Monday on this page, but the question is: what's next in store for the Route 119 campus, with its dozens of fine buildings and ...
