When I first came to Cedar Falls in the fall of 1995, I knew I was here to stay. Iowa was where I had first stepped on American soil four years earlier. Cedar Falls is where I got my first post-graduate job teaching journalism at the University of Northern Iowa.

But what really told me I was home was when I received a phone call from one of my son’s teachers at Peet Junior High in early April that first year.

She was not calling to complain about my son’s homework, she said. What Mrs. Zischke really wanted to do was offer to host my wedding, without ever having met me in person.

I was a complete stranger, an anonymous inhabitant of a modest two-bedroom apartment on Melrose Drive, the mother of just one of her many students.

She had learned from my son that my future husband, Rick, and I were looking for a place to get married within our post-graduate students budget.

Without any local roots, I had planned to celebrate our union and host our reception at the open shelter in Seerley Park. When Mrs. Zischke heard about it and I don’t know how she did--she took it to upon herself to offer me what many others have done since.

She opened the doors of her home and her heart to me and my family.

In retrospect, her initiative was as wise as it was generous because contrary to the forecast, June 1, 1996, was a very rainy day, and I had no backup plan.

As the editor of the Cedar Falls Times, I am opening, just like my son’s remarkable teacher did, the pages of the Times to you and the people you know.

In my work as a professor of journalism at UNI, a correspondent for The Des Moines Register, and the host of Here & There, the local cable program many of you have seen on Channel 15 since 1999, I have always tried to connect the classroom, the newsroom and the local community.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about how we can really put in practice the much-studied concept of grassroots journalism, how we can better connect the town and the gown, how we can provide opportunities for our community members to tell their stories, and how we can learn from one another.

For as long as I have been here, I have worked to make this happen.

But there was always a missing link since there was not a truly local newspaper to empower our community and to allow people to hear themselves and be heard.

In the past, many of you have approached me to write your stories because you thought they were particularly inspirational, or unbearably sad. I took notes, but made no promises because I knew it was hard to find an outlet for many of the stories I had jotted down in my reporter’s notebook.

Now I can deliver.

Your pain, your passions, and your triumphs can now find a home in the Times. What leads is not what bleeds, but what bolsters our development as human beings. Your progress and your children’s successes can be showcased and chronicled.

One by one, you will see local characters emerge in this first draft of our local history.

You will no longer have to wait for Mother’s Day to recognize women’s central and still silent role in our society. You will no longer have to wait for Memorial Day or Veterans Day to read about the sacrifices veterans and their families have made. You will no longer have to wait for religious holidays to appreciate the ethnic diversity of our community.

The Times will cover these stories as we find the people who live them because for us, you are not just a quote. You are the core of our reporting. We want to put together the ever-changing mosaic of our community, one story at a time.

For me, as the head of the editorial content of the Times, your loyalty and your trust is the best measure of how good our newspaper is.

The Times is a rare opportunity to document who we are as a community, what our values are and how we want our children and our grandchildren to remember us.

In the short three weeks I have lived the Times, I have recruited an awesome corps of ambitious reporters. We are as diverse as the community we cover, but what we all have in common is a passion for reporting and a respect for the best traditions of American journalism.

The Times is our chance to do what community newspapers do best--chronicle and connect the quilt of our community while showcasing the multiple communities, which make it colorful and enduring.

Contribute to this historic opportunity!