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OP-ED: The letter: A Christmas gift from 1943

Editor鈥檚 note: This column originally appeared in 2024. "Here it is Christmas Day," my future father-in-law wrote to his family in Uniontown in the middle of World War II. Cpl. Bob Reynolds was stationed "somewhere in India" with the 25th Field Hospital, U.S. Army. "In a couple of hours," ...

Learning to be assertive

Q. This may sound like a trivial problem, and I know it is, in the scheme of things, but I am still stressed about it. I went to get my hair done for the Christmas formal. I had pics of the way I wanted it to look, but when it was finished, it didn鈥檛 look anything like what I wanted. I paid ...

OP-ED: Christmas with Mrs. Claus

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 ...

Shapiro’s way: listen and solve problems

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 ...

OP-ED: A journey through Bosnia

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 ...

It was a very good year until it wasn’t

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 ...