By Dan Horn
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Vanessa White, her husband, Byron, and their five children (left to right), Felicia, 5, Kevin, 10, Zachary, 5, Camille, 11, and Jocelyn, 5, sit on the porch of their North Avondale home. (Jeff Swinger photo)

Dr. Tim Broderick left Cincinnati a decade ago to do cutting-edge medical research on the East Coast.

Vanessa White packed her bags for a chance to live and go to school in Chicago, while Tina Frampton said goodbye to family so she could crisscross the country with her rock star husband.

And after years away, these native Cincinnatians all reached the same conclusion: They wanted to come home.

As they gather with loved ones this Thanksgiving Day, all three will celebrate the ties to community and family that drew them back to their hometown after so many years away.

In some ways, they are no different from the other Greater Cincinnati natives who come home each year.

"This is a good place to live," says Michael Romanos, a professor in the University of Cincinnati's School of Planning. "There is a sort of love affair that Cincinnatians have with Cincinnati."

Although census data don't track such things, demographers say the desire to return home influences migration patterns in any city, from Los Angeles to New York to Cincinnati.

So what pulls people back? In most cases, the reasons are no different than they are for people returning home to other cities: family ties, close friends, new jobs.

Some return after seeking their fortune, or after deciding life in the bigger, brighter city wasn't what it seemed from afar. Others find that a few years away gave them a new appreciation for the friends and relatives they left behind.

"I think it's family that brings a lot of people back," says Dr. Tim Broderick, an expert in robotic surgery who recently returned home with his wife and two children.

For Broderick, who has six brothers and sisters in Greater Cincinnati, family was the reason he made the move. He had a great job opportunity at University Hospital, but his skills qualified him for great jobs in a lot of places.

"If I wasn't from Cincinnati, I don't know if I would have come here," he says.

Returning to your roots

Bill Frey, a demographer with the Milken Institute in California, says that's a recurring theme among people who return home after years spent elsewhere.

"They have all their attachments (in their hometown)," Frey says. "That's important."

He says when people leave their hometown and later make another move, that move is typically back home.

"The No. 1 destination is to go back where they came from," Frey says.

And Cincinnati may be further enticing to those who return for more than just a reunion with friends and relatives. The city ranks at or below the national average in the cost of housing, health care, transportation and other living expenses.

Even so, the city is not always an easy sell to newcomers considering a move here for a new job. Cincinnati is a landlocked, middle-tier city with some lingering image problems, from riots to racial tensions to the raid on the Mapplethorpe exhibit more than a decade ago.

When Broderick told friends in Virginia he was moving home to Cincinnati, several asked him the same question: Why?

"You hear about the riots all the time," Broderick says. "It tears you up. Living outside Cincinnati, you don't hear about the great things about Cincinnati."

Not a bad spot after all

That's not a problem with native Cincinnatians. They already know what they like about the town - from Graeter's ice cream to the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra - and they often have plenty of friends and family back home urging them to return.

"Sometimes the grass is always greener," says Nick Vehr, vice president of economic development at the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce and a former Cincinnati City Council member.

"People want to ski and be near the ocean and be in fun and exciting places, and after they work through that phase of life they realize it wasn't so bad at home."

Vehr counts himself among the Cincinnati natives who left town, only to return years later. He and his wife lived in Washington, D.C., for more than three years before deciding to come home.

They had just had a baby and found the cost of living in Washington was too high to raise a family.

"Cincinnati is a wonderful place to begin a family, to go to the next phase of your career," Vehr says. "Coming home made sense. Some people find great comfort in that."