Meet the Original Webmaster

After eight years, Ed has decided that it is time to move on to other projects. He will be ending his "tour of duty" as webmaster for this site on December 31. 2005

In October of 1997, Main Street Point Pleasant, Inc. called together several of the towns people to announce that it would embark on a mission to create a Internet Web Site for the City of Point Pleasant and Mason County.  This project was made possible by a new volunteer by the name of Ed Lowe and a grant from IBM’s Employee and Retirees Fund for Community Service. IBM provided an IBM 300GL Personal Computer to support the project.  

Two and a half years later, some 600 hours of counted volunteer hours and probably half that many uncounted – with many, many frustrations and problems solved, that project is, at last, seeing the light of day. Although the web site has been running at several addresses with some parts not always working – it is now operating on a solid server under its own 
Domain Name      www.pointpleasantwv.org.

The site has over 430 pages of information about the area along with some 200 supporting photos. The site is well indexed with a comprehensive menu that logically leads the viewer to explore his or her area of interest. Quite a bit of the text was gleaned from old publications and brochures about the area but most of the photos are the work of the site developer Ed Lowe. Ed has also provided links to many other web sites that may be of interest to those visiting the site.

Lowe, a native of Roane County first came to Point Pleasant in 1950 as a resident field engineer for Appalachian Power. He spent a year and a half inspecting, testing and accepting the work of the contractors during the construction of Units 2 & 3 at Philip Sporn Generating Station. During his residency here (at the Lowe Hotel) he met and married a local girl. Upon the completion of the assignment at Philip Sporn, Lowe went to work for a construction company, building power substations throughout Ohio, West Virginia and Virginia. He was with this company during the construction of Vanadium Steel in Northern Mason County. 

In 1954 Lowe decided to go with IBM. He was hired as a customer engineer in the IBM Columbus Ohio office. He advanced in the company, with assignments in Rochester MN, White Plains NY, Poughkeepsie NY, and Raleigh NC. He spent most of his 36 years with IBM in headquarters staff and management assignments, retiring in 1990. He and his wife spent the next four years looking for a place for a “retirement home”. 

On a trip back to Point Pleasant in 1994 to visit his wife's relatives, while staying in Krodel Park in their motorhome – his wife remarked “ I believe I’d like to retire back here”. The next day they started looking for a house. That search ended nine months later, when they found a nice home on WV Route 2 north of Point Pleasant with 4 acres of property for sale. They moved in December, the following February, his wife of 44 years died.  After settling the estate, Lowe realized that he needed to find something to occupy his time and to establish himself as a member of the community. He knew very few people outside his deceased wife’s family and felt the need to get acquainted with the people of the community. 

Calling upon Mario Liberatore, then President of Bank One, he asked where he could use his skills and experience to help the community on a volunteer basis. Mr. Liberatore recommended that he become a volunteer with Main Street Point Pleasant, Inc. 

And that is how Point Pleasant became the beneficiary of over 2500 hours of volunteer work provided by Ed Lowe over the past four years. 

Lowe has built Main Street Point Pleasant's computer network from one small underpowered PC to four near state-of-the-art computers interconnected via LAN network. This network supports both film/slide and photo scanner, a color printer capable of printing 11X17 posters and was recently enhanced by adding a color laser printer. This network has also been expanded to support the Mason County Chamber of Commerce, the Mason County Development Authority, The Sternwheel Regatta and the Mason County Tourism office. This allows these offices to share PC system resources. This network is also supported by a hi-speed, two-way cable modem supplied by Charter Communications. This access to the Internet provides these offices with connect speeds of up to 10 times the speed provided by telephone company connections, and allows the users to be connected to the web full time. This means that a user will get e-mail immediately upon it arriving in their mailbox. Funds for much of this hardware was made possible by a grant from the Jackson Foundation. 

Lowe’s experience at IBM did not prepare him well for this work. Being a manager most of his years, he had a good overall knowledge, but very little detail experience of the workings of Personal Computers. This was just the challenge he needed to get his mind thinking again and to get him active in the community. He admits it was quite a challenge learning the details needed to make things work the way they should. It took him six months to sort out how to make the hi-speed cable modem connection to the LAN network work (he works a scheduled 5 hours every Tuesday). Charter Communications only supports one PC connected to their service, and could only tell him that it “was possible to connect additional PC’s but they didn’t know or couldn’t tell him how”. Many hours of research and study slowly revealed the answers. This hard earned knowledge was tapped recently by a local insurance company that wanted to install a hi-speed cable modem to support their business, Within 1 ½ hours, the network was up and running! 

Lowe’s skill doesn’t stop with computers; his photographs have been used in the local newspaper on a number of occasions. The C of C, MC Tourism as well as MSPP have all called upon him to photograph events for them. And, as mentioned earlier, the web site is full of his images. Ed says that his interest in photography and computers have come together to fulfill a life long dream, to be able to enhance, modify and print his photographs. He had tried both black and white, and color photo darkroom processing, but was never satisfied with the work he could turn out (and besides, the chemicals stink). Now with the power of a PC program called PhotoShop, he is able to enhance, modify and print his photos with ease. 

Ed remarried three years ago, choosing the Tu-Endie Wei Park for the location. He now shares his beautiful home and four acres with is wife Rita and enjoys frequent visits from his new granddaughters. Ed says “ you probably have seen the bumper sticker that reads

well I did!  Life is wonderful; I’ve never been as happy and content as I have been for the past three years. The volunteer work with MSPP and the other organizations located at 305 Main Street is just enough to keep me active and young. I plan to continue my volunteer work for the next 30 years, at which time I’ll be 101, then I’ll assess whether I should retire. I love my adopted hometown of Point Pleasant and want it to continue to prosper. I hope my little contribution will in some way to help make that happen. If I could have but one wish, that wish would be –

Ed says "As an outsider, I’m appalled at some of the things that go on. “

If Ed continues on his current schedule he will have contributed over 1000 hours this year to MSPP. Although he comes into the Main Street Point Pleasant office on Tuesdays, he does most of his web development work on his own personal computers at home. He would like to see many more people pick up the challenge to get out and find a project in the community they would like to support and then commit to help. There is so much to be done and it’s fun and so rewarding. 

Please visit Point Pleasant’s Web Site at www.pointpleasantwv.org and learn what our area has to offer and then tell someone else about it. If you have suggestions on subjects to add, Ed would appreciate your input, or better yet, offer to help gather the material and prepare it for adding to the site. Together we can build an excellent database about our wonderful little city. He can be reached at edlo@pointpleasantwv.org  or at 305 Main Street, Point Pleasant, WV 25550. 

Ed has a sign posted on his office wall that reads:

We could all benefit by applying a bit of his philosophy.