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.