A new $1 million airport terminal greets flying guests at Ottumwa Industrial Airport. Ottumwa is one of the few cities in Iowa served by national Amtrak, with trains passing through daily.

During the summer, Ottumwa hosts the Pro Balloon Races and the 4-H Expo at Ottumwa Park. People also gather in Central Park for “Live After 5” to enjoy live music. To kick off fall, Ottumwa celebrates Oktoberfest. Throughout the year, the Ottumwa and Southeast Iowa symphonies hold concerts in Ottumwa.

Ottumwa’s allure is helped by nearby Eddyville, a bio-technology hub with an industrial park that is the home of companies such as Cargill, Wacker Biochem and Anjinomoto as well as the Indian Hills bioprocess technician training center.

Ottumwans also love their 700 acres of city parks, county parks including Pioneer Ridge Nature Center just south of town and close proximity to the state’s largest lake, Rathbun, and also Red Rock Reservoir, both within only an hour’s drive. State parks surround the area, and Shimek Forest is nearby.

Steeped in agriculture, Ottumwa is home to John Deere Ottumwa Works with its $37 million annual payroll.

Church spires dot the landscape, and Indian Hills Community College is built on the grounds of Ottumwa Heights College which was served by the Sisters of the Humility of Mary who founded Tally Hospital in 1880, St. Joseph’s Catholic Hospital in 1914 and remain involved with today’s Ottumwa Regional Health Center which just opened a new cancer treatment center.

The Ottumwa shopping area draws customers from all over southeast Iowa and northern Missouri. Ottumwa is in an ideal location for extended growth which the four-lane Des Moines to Burlington corridor will help promote.

Ottumwa is a city that didn’t die when the largest employer — John Morrell & Company — closed its doors in 1973. It was hard times for years, but Ottumwa did not give up. Other meat packing plants came and went. Today, Cargill Meat Solutions keeps expanding on the former Morrell plant site and has also helped the city diversify. Today, the city’s nearly 25,000 population includes more than 12 percent of Hispanic nationality. The newcomers have added to the town’s culture with new restaurants offering delectable Mexican fare, new grocery stores and bakeries.

An active Ottumwa Area Arts Council, the city’s two symphony orchestras and a vibrant community players group and children’s chorus continue to enrich Ottumwans’ lives, providing music and drama for the soul and entertainment for young and old. Dance studios thrive as do such worthwhile organizations as a busy, vibrant YMCA, Your Family Center, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and a summer 4-H Expo event that draws crowds to the main Ottumwa Park. Civic groups from Rotary to Lions to Kiwanis raise funds to help others.

Ottumwa is often known around the country as the home of TV’s “M-A-S-H” fictional character Radar O’Reilly.

He may be fictional, but the town is very real. The VIPs who have lived here include Miss Universe Carol Morris; Lee Enterprises founder A.W. Lee; New York City opera coach Margaret Ann Hoswell; UFO expert Donald Keyhoe; Philip B. Hofmann, later the head of Johnson & Johnson; and President Nixon who returned in the 1970s to dedicate Rathbun Lake. Book authors such as Edna Ferber and Richard Bach have lived here. As have famous book thievs such as Stephen Blumberg.

Our greatest characters have left their legacies. What philanthropist Peter Ballingall did for the city 120 years ago, leading the drive for the Coal Palace, a group of civic minded residents are doing now, putting their faith and hard work into efforts to make Ottumwa the hub of southeast Iowa, from a satellite navigation system added to an outstanding municipal Cedar Creek golf course to a convention center which, with the nearby water park, will help make the downtown area and adjoining river walk a magnet for visitors.

Ottumwa is an All-American City and a Main Street Community.