John Makar - March 15, 1954 - April 6, 2016

Submitted by CTHS on April 06, 2016 - 9:05 pm
John Makar

We have some sad news for CTHS members who knew John and Harmony Line fans who have seen his slide show or perhaps a copy of Ghost Rails VI. John was a long time CTHS member and former board member.

John spoke to our group for the first time in 1999 at Plains Church. John was back in Cranberry in 2004 to speak in the Library Meeting Room. On November 28, 2006 he appeared in the Council Chambers of the Cranberry Township Municipal Center. This presentation was video taped and due to poor audio quality, left on the shelf for about 10 years. After learning of his passing, the video was uploaded to YouTube, where anyone interested can watch it now. For your convenience, the video is embedded below. It is about 86 minutes in length including the Q&A afterwards. The camera was in the back of the room, so you will have to turn the audio up in order to hear it.

The cake!John spoke to our group for the last time at our Annual Meeting on February 10, 2013. Since it was the Annual Meeting, we had a custom cake made for the event.

About midway through 2015, the board thought we should have John do our 2016 Annual Meeting. The first sign of trouble was the PO returning his September 2015 newsletter. We were unable to contact or locate him. In speaking to a cousin of John's at the funeral, we learned that he had become ill and was not living at home for a while. We also learned that John's historical collections were donated to appropriate groups and in the case of the Harmony Line stuff, that now resides at the PA Trolley Museum.

Event Date
April 06, 2016 - 1:00 pm