The following commentary was in the Plain Dealer's "From the Community" section on Sunday, Nov. 23, 2008. It was written by Christopher Thomas, a native Clevelander who is now a third-year law student at Harvard:
Anyone who grew up or attended college in Cleveland during the last 10 or 20 years has
heard plenty about the region’s “brain drain.” Having done both — I grew up in
Solon and went to college at Case
Western Reserve University
— refrains about the benefits of staying in town are almost as much a part of
the soundtrack of my youth as Tom Hamilton’s joyous call of “a ball hit deep,
waaay back, and gone to the left field bleachers.” Although I could recite
factoids about the comparative cost of living and the world-class theater
district as well as any local jobs recruiter, I, like many of the area’s youth,
always assumed that my future lay elsewhere.
Except for CWRU, I applied only to colleges outside of Ohio. I ended up at CWRU. Again, except for
CWRU, I applied only to law schools outside of Ohio. I ended up in Boston,
at Harvard University. It’s not that I didn’t like Cleveland; I loved it. I
simply harbored the assumed, but unexamined, conviction that resides within so
many of Cleveland’s
most-accomplished youth: opportunity lies elsewhere. I don’t know where this
notion was spawned. Maybe, I suppose, from Clevelanders’ strange pessimism
about everything from the Browns to the
weather to the state of the city.
But, as I aged a few years and began to think more about my future,
I increasingly realized that not only does opportunity lie in Cleveland,
but in many ways, Cleveland
has more of it than any other place I considered. Cleveland’s slow turn from a manufacturing
economy to a service economy has created innumerable opportunities for the type
of creative contributor I hope to become. It’s hard to go to New
York or Chicago
and come up with new ideas that will fundamentally change the dynamics of the
region’s economy. But Cleveland
will need those very ideas to move our city beyond the loss of local bulwarks
such as National City Bank and soon, perhaps, Chrysler or General Motors.
This is why reversing the brain drain is so important. Innovation and creativity are the only hope
for the future of Cleveland,
and the chance to create a new, dynamic economy is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
for young Clevelanders like me. While our parents bemoan the departure of the
companies that made Cleveland great 50 years
ago, our generation has the opportunity to create the next great era in Cleveland history.
But there’s more. Visions of career success and civic influence,
viewed through the hungry eyes of hope-filled youth, are not the whole story.
As I have progressed further through my 20s, I have started to feel more and
more the absence of the little things that make me love Cleveland so much.
My friends at law school often comment about how Ohioans and
Clevelanders are more proud of their home than any other people in the country.
It is true, but not because of our prudent calculation of the opportunities Cleveland provides for professional success or because Cleveland possesses the
typical attributes that impact my generation’s choices about where to live.
Rather, it is the little things that make us proud. Though I
love to cite our Big 5 orchestra and world-class art museum as much as everyone
else, it’s sharing that first pint of Christmas Ale with a friend at the
Winking Lizard or a July Fourth barbecue in the Metroparks that really makes me
love our town. It’s introducing outsiders to the joy of pierogis with sour
cream at Sokolowski’s University Inn or listening to Joe Tait describe “Flight
23 ready for take off” after a big dunk from LeBron. None of these are big
things, but they’re the things that make me love Cleveland,
the things that make Cleveland a part of who I
am and cause me to stop and say, “I belong in Cleveland, my city.”
This is, or should be, the essential calculus for any
aspiring young professional deciding whether to return home to Cleveland. Combine the opportunities provided
by a large, proud city struggling to transition to a new economy, the
opportunity to help with that transition and the little things that make life
complete, and Cleveland
looks pretty good. No, it looks great.
Cleveland,
I’ll be home this spring.