From Our Kitchen Table to Yours: Finding Home in Alden

Neither Rob nor I grew up in Alden.

I grew up 30 minutes away in Cheektowaga before moving away, and Rob was raised in New York City, with later stops in California. We eventually met and lived together in Tennessee through the quietest months of the pandemic. When the time came to start a family, though, Tennessee didn’t quite fit what we were dreaming of. We wanted to be closer to grandparents, and above all, we wanted our kids to grow up in a place with a real sense of community.

When we stumbled upon our house here in Alden, we fell in love almost instantly. It was everything we had imagined for our kids’ childhood home: neighbors who look out for neighbors, families living in houses passed down through generations, and a town that gathers for summer events.

When we first arrived, we also fell in love with the Alden Advertiser. It reflected the heartbeat of this town in a way we had never experienced anywhere else: the small-town warmth, the quiet accounting of neighbors helping neighbors, and familiar faces on every page. Not long after we unpacked, the Advertiser paused publication, and that shared silence left an unmistakable hole in our mornings.

Over the past year, we found ourselves more and more a part of the community. Rob joined the local fire department and started sitting in on board meetings, while I got to know the neighbors and reconnected with a college friend who also lives here. Before having kids, I swore I’d never use daycare, but our experience at BrightPath completely changed my mind. Seeing the same familiar faces at drop-off as at the grocery store and the park showed us just how special this community is.

At gatherings over the summer, the conversation kept circling back to how much everyone missed having a town paper. People were craving that shared connection. So Rob and I decided to combine our hobbies, sit down at our dining room table, and put together our debut issue. The outpouring of community support blew us away. When our first run of 1,000 printed copies arrived, neither of us really knew what that much newsprint looked like until it took over our dining room table as an enormous centerpiece. It was exciting and deeply humbling.

We are building this paper month by month, with the goal of returning Alden to a weekly print rhythm once we smooth out the kinks. Thank you for welcoming us to your kitchen tables. We look forward to seeing what this turns into together.