JOHNSTOWN -- Andy Solomon shoveled snow from the sidewalk outside the Knights of Columbus building on Main Street Monday evening, unaware that his longtime friend and elected representative, John Murtha, had died.

Hearing the news, he paused and looked to his wife, Kathy, who was working alongside him, and took a deep breath.

"I'll tell you what," he sighed, leaning on his shovel. "This town will miss Jack Murtha."

Residents said Mr. Murtha represented Johnstown best because he was a part of Johnstown, and Johnstown was a part of him.

"Jack's brought a lot of things to town," said Mr. Solomon, 62, a retired schoolteacher who had known Mr. Murtha since the late 1960s. "A lot of defense stuff. People can say what they want, but the truth is if that pork stuff isn't going to Johnstown; it's going to a lot of other towns in some other congressmen's districts."

This pocket of Pennsylvania doesn't much care for change. Mr. Murtha, the longest-serving U.S. House member from the state, followed Rep. John P. Saylor, who was elected to the seat 12 times himself. The two men represented the region for more than 60 years.

"When we find a person we like, we're very loyal to the person, we try to work with the person," Ginger Myers said as she walked through downtown Johnstown with her friend, Betty Hall. "They may say some things, they may do some things that we don't always agree with, but we tell them about it and they usually correct their ways.

"We're not like a lot of other places where they jump from person to person to person. That is not wise. I always voted for him, because he stood up for what I believed in."

Ms. Myers cast her first vote for Mr. Murtha shortly after she graduated from high school in the mid-1970s. To her, he represented her community because he championed Johnstown to people who might never have even heard of the place.

"He talked to businesspeople, he talked to contractors. There were no bribes involved," she said, scoffing at some of the criticism aimed at Mr. Murtha during his tenure. "He told them, 'I've got a place here that is low-income, with low housing costs, but it's a good, quiet community, with dedicated people. Some of them took three or four years to come here, but they did.

"You have to remember, Johnstown's been through three floods, and Murtha has been with us through two of them. He knew what it was like to be from here. And he got the help in here and he came in himself and helped people, hand-on-hand, to get back on their feet."

"He stood up for the people in this town," said Ms. Hall, 50, a lifelong resident of Johnstown. "If he thought we needed something in this town to build it up, be it the military or business, he did what he could. And not just the military veterans or the ones who passed away, but their families, too, and generations on down. He was down-to-earth.

"Johnstown's going to go to hell without him. He's brought so much to this area, he's done so much for this area. Without him, it's going to fall apart."

Both women, as well as other residents, said Mr. Murtha might have stirred strong emotions with some of the things he said, but they said that was a quality they respected.

"He stood by our military. Not just the Johnstown military, but the military people all across this country," Ms. Myers said. "He wasn't afraid to speak his piece about the situation. He thought they were wrong in the way they were handling the situation, he spoke up. Even if it was politically risky."

"He came back for functions all the time and we'd run into him," Mr. Solomon said. "He always came back for veterans things. Even when that baloney was going on about the Iraq war, when he was getting guff on the national level, the local people still supported him. He never forgot where he came from."

Cynthia Frank, 50, who works in a Johnstown hotel, said she didn't know Mr. Murtha personally, but admired all the things he stood for.

"He brought a lot of the technology jobs to this area. And the defense plants," she said. "So he did have a big impact on the community.

"I give Jack Murtha credit for serving in the Vietnam war and not dodging the draft, which some of those people did. And he understands the veterans' perspectives on things.

"He was more conservative than a lot of Democrats and that's reflective of the people of Johnstown. He went more with the Johnstown values."

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