About
Carl: I grew up in Mercer County, PA, a little bit closer to Fredonia than Stoneboro but attended Lakeview HS and graduated in 1969. My personality placed me somewhere between geek and nerd but, even in HS years, I did what I could to help others.
College? I attended Clarion U for 3.5 semesters but I was majoring in Secondary Ed, Math & Physics. I’m sure God had other plans for me because I moved to California in the early 70’s looking for a good job. I married there and also navigated an amicable divorce. In 1997, I moved back to PA and found myself in Kittanning – a comfortable distance from where I grew up but not on top of my family and friends from years ago. I didn’t want to live my life according to 1960s expectations and also I learned a few things about life that I didn’t figure out while in PA… it might have been unfair to my PA family to live too close.
Moving back to PA seemed like the right thing to do. I had driven through Kittanning while on vacation (ONCE!) and pretty much decided that’s where I was settling down for at least a while. No friends, no church family (yet) but a beautiful spot beside the Allegheny River.
And so, on a somewhat boring Saturday afternoon, I looked at a brochure from the Tourist Bureau called the Kittanning Walking Tour, decided to walk the tour as something to do and I loved it – the picturesque courthouse and jail, historic buildings downtown, all of it! I returned to my apartment on Chestnut St, grabbed my Epson PC10 digital camera, and started over at the beginning of the tour, taking pictures as I went. Sometime in the next few days, I published the Online Walking Tour of Kittanning on my personal website, then later registered the website kittanning.com and moved the Walking Tour here.
Did you know that the Fellowship Hall owned by First United Methodist Church (FUMC) Kittanning was not properly identified for a long time? God works in mysterious ways, does He not? That’s the same building that was used for movie extras to gather in and stay warm when Richard Gere and Laura Linney were in town filming Mothman Prophecies. It is also frequently used for Red Cross Blood Drives and for an art exhibit during the annual Fort Armstrong Folk Festival.
- 1998-99 Traveled back to Calif to get my pension vested. Working for a friend on the new San Francisco International Airport terminal, I was happy to make a few extra bank deposits.
- 2001 Started local4all.com which was influenced a lot from kittanning.com and has changed a lot since then.
- 2002-10 Volunteered with Armstrong Habitat for Humanity.
- 2007 With a friend, bought Dan Warner’s placemat advertising business. In 2019, I became 100% owner.
- 2002-2017 Along with the placemats business, did a decent amount of handyman work and volunteerism.
- March 25, 2017 – met Jane my future wife online which is a story for another time. If you ask me about my “Red Letter Days”, that’s the first of five.
On Sept 9th, 2017, I married Gloria Jane Moore in the smallest city in the USA, Parker, just a few miles up the Allegheny River from Kittanning. Jane is her preferred name although she is known by both names in different circles.
Along the way and over the years, I have been trying to improve Google Maps (added the ampi-theater as a place and labeled North Park to differentiate it from Riverfront Park to the south of Citizen’s Bridge). Are there any other locations in Kittanning that need help? Send me an email from the Contact Us page or give me a call!
2023 update: I started looking at the KDC website (again) with a goal to improve it using WordPress plus the advice and suggestions of friends and neighbors. I know that WordPress is going to take a few hours of learning and then lots of updating. Prayers are welcome!
Carl