My Town With Andy Main

My Town: Growing – Andy Main in Redding, CA

I was born in Redding and was raised near the Sacramento River with my four brothers, mom and dad and a menagerie of cats and dogs. The ridgelines of the mountains are indelibly etched in my mind’s eye as I grew up climbing trees and rooftops wherever I could find them.

During the summers, my mom would take us to South City Park, where we learned to play tennis. There have been times during my life where I haven’t played, but I’ve always come back, and in 2001, our Sun Oaks U.S. Tennis Association tennis team won the national championships. In my youth, we visited many of the treasures that surround Redding. Camping trips to the Trinity Alps, Lassen Park and other mountain areas filled my spirit with a love of the outdoors. I stood at the bottom of the Glory Hole at Whiskeytown Lake in the early ‘60s before it was filled with water, I’ve summited Mt. Shasta and I have backpacked and hiked all over the North State.

Mom and Dad took us to live concerts, plays and symphonies at David Marr Auditorium, one of a few places where a group of 1,000 people could gather to view the arts. I remember walking the great halls of that school as a ninth-grade student at Nova High School. Built in 1926, the school serves as an example of great architecture in Redding.
I helped build the Pilgrim Congregational Church, designed by the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright. My parents took us out to the hills west of Redding to gather stones for the construction of that church, which served as a regular education on the importance of all things spiritual in our lives. In high school, our teenage youth group traveled to conferences and field trips to learn more about the world around us and to how to treat all people with love and consideration.

After college at UC Berkeley, I came back to the Redding area and worked for our family lumber business. I married Nancy Caster, a local girl, who attended Shasta High School and is the love of my life. We lived in Bieber, San Luis Obispo and on the Big Island of Hawaii before moving back to Redding, where we raised our two girls, Hannah and Lisa. Nancy and I own Shasta.com, a local internet service provider, and we’ve been happy to call the Redding area our home for the last 28 years. We look forward to watching Redding grow.

Photo by: MC Hunter Photography