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Donn Esmonde: Newcomer tells us why we like it here 

Donn Esmonde: 1/09/09

Lately, all seems grim. The Bills again went down the tubes. The Sabres bring little thrill. Albany will fill a $14 billion budget hole largely with forced contributions from our wallets. Higher taxes and fees translate into fewer jobs for our upstate “Appalachia.”

To lighten the miasma of woe, I bring you Ed Lattman. He is, among other things, a reminder of why we live here, despite it all. He may even represent a glimmer of hope on our economic horizon.

Lattman is that rarest of creatures, a corporate executive lured here six months ago by an appealing job. He left a dean’s position at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to become CEO at Hauptman- Woodward, the bioinformatics research center. Attracting talent is what the new Hauptman-Woodward building, and a research colloboration with neighboring Roswell Park and UB, was supposed to do. Lattmann is part of the payoff.

He is 68, with a bulldog build, graying hair and an edge of shyness uncommon to corporate executives. He came with the predictable outsider’s view.

“I had,” he acknowledged during a recent sit-down in his office, “the Weather Channel impression of Buffalo.”

This is not, in some ways, the standard “Transplant Learns to Love Buffalo” tale. Yes, he has the requisite Philharmonic season tickets and spends nights at the theater. He was suitably impressed by grand downtown buildings and iconic Frank Lloyd Wright structures.

In other ways, Lattman’s good impressions go beyond the predictable. He connects with Hispanic Buffalo on regular trips to a West Side grocery store.

“It gives you that international slice of life,” he said. “The neighborhood looks a little tough, but what I found is a vigorous, polite, working-class community.”

He did not expect the president of UB, top-shelf bankers and philanthropic funders to greet him on a recruiting visit.

“It showed a commitment,” he said.

At downtown Spot Coffee, he melded into a group of civic-minded regulars. Even the winters, he said, “are not that bad. You find out that most of the snow falls to the south.

“I was recruited [last] winter, and I still came,” he said, chuckling. “It just seemed like a very friendly, receptive community — more Midwestern than East Coast, in that sense.”

Lattman was sold even though some of our amenities meant nothing to him. He does not sail or fish, so the lake matters little. Bad knees retired him from skiing, so the hills have no appeal. Nor is he blind to the blight in America’s third-poorest city, having taken a drive through the barren streets near Central Terminal.

Little things made a big impression. He sees strangers pushing people’s cars out of the snow. He appreciates the smaller-town patience of other drivers, who refrain from running the disoriented newcomer off the road. He noticed that you do not have to put down your firstborn as collateral to buy a house.

“Buffalo is significantly cheaper than Baltimore,” he said, “and housing in Baltimore is cheaper than D. C.”

Last summer, he basked in Buffalo’s best-kept secret: summers naturally air-conditioned by lake breezes.

“In Baltimore, some days in August it was 94 degrees,” he recalled, “with 100 percent humidity.”

After six months in Buffalo, Lattman is a convert.

“I heard many people say how unnerving it is when you first come, but then you grow to like it,” Lattman said. “That is what is happening to me.”

The ease of day-to-day living. The hidden secrets of a downtrodden town. These are good things to remember when sifting through the Bills’ ashes, when opening the next tax bill.