You Can Go Home Again

Buffalo Tries to Reclaim Its Native Sons and Daughters

This is a love story about tens of thousands of people who don't yet realize they're in love. They live all over the world, but their hearts belong to the place where they grew up: Buffalo, N.Y.

For decades, residents of this often-maligned Rust Belt city have mounted a steady exodus in search of jobs and warm weather. They've endured endless jokes about everything from Buffalo's blizzards to the four straight Super Bowl defeats by the Bills in the 1990s. Many expatriates have taken to belittling their old home, as they try to fit in with new neighbors in the Sunbelt.

But next week, if all goes well, some former Buffalonians will rediscover affection for their roots by attending "Buffalo Old Home Week," a stunt the city last tried in 1907. Organizers hope hundreds of expatriates will be enthralled by the wonders of Buffalo and their good memories, and decide to move home.

"It's so much nicer to love Buffalo from your front porch," says 47-year-old Judi Griggs, who returned in 2004, after 23 years in Texas and Georgia. She regrets not coming back earlier. "I have two daughters with Southern accents. It?s just wrong."

During Old Home Week, Ms. Griggs and 200 other repatriates will be volunteer "ambassadors," assigned to talk up the city. They will pitch the reasonable housing costs, the lack of traffic, the friendly neighborhoods and the lure of reuniting with extended families.

Other rural and Rust Belt communities also are trying to woo back former residents. This week, at the Parkersburg, W.Va., Homecoming Festival, events such as a dog show and a parade will offer nostalgic tugs for former townspeople. In Omaha, Neb., ex-residents gather every other summer for "Native Omaha Days." (In 2004, Nebraska's officials rented a hotel ballroom in Denver, Colo., to make homecoming pitches to 350 ex-Nebraskans; a half-dozen ended up moving back.)

Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack has visited such states as Arizona and Georgia to host receptions for former Iowa residents - and to lure them home. He touts the strength of the schools and the state's "rush minute" traffic, "between 5:00 and 5:01 p.m." Ex-Iowans can find other incentives, too: In Franklin County, for example, Hampton State Bank offers low-interest car and home loans to former residents who return.

Buffalo Old Home Week 2006, with its grassroots online campaign, could be a model for other cities yearning for expatriates. The event was sparked after local entrepreneur Newell Nussbaumer came upon vintage postcards promoting the 1907 event. The postcards were designed to be mailed to friends and family who had moved away.

In 1901, Buffalo had hosted the Pan-American Exposition, but after President William McKinley was assassinated at the fair, some felt the city was cursed. Old Home Week 1907 was an attempt to lure back those who left. The event was well-attended, but for 99 years, was never repeated.

Mr. Nussbaumer remade the 1907 postcard campaign for the Internet age. He and a small band of young activists tracked down 110,000 expats- email addresses, including 68,000 "Buffalo Bills Backers." Former residents (my wife is one) have been invited back for a host of festivities next week, including house tours and a job fair. Each ex-resident will be paired with a personal ambassador who will keep in touch for a year.

Tammy Bialek-Lehrer, 34, left Buffalo in 1994, and has been a Las Vegas-style showgirl overseas. Now a chiropractor in Evanston, Ill., she vows to move back to Buffalo next year and hopes attending Old Home Week will inspire her. "I feel a void no other city can fill," she says.

Old Home Week organizers are plotting to avoid embarrassments. For instance, they will pick up expats at the airport. "Cab drivers are our worst ambassadors," Mr. Nussbaumer says. "They always ask people, 'Why would you want to go to Buffalo'" If [former residents] get in the wrong hands, they'll end up in Niagara Falls."

Marti Gorman, 52, was away from Buffalo for 32 years, living in seven cities world-wide. "I thought I hated Buffalo," she says. "I taught my daughter to be embarrassed by Buffalo." She returned last year, loves it and now is overseeing Old Home Week logistics. "This is my penance for all the bad things I said."

Buffalo's population is 290,000 today, from a 1950 peak of 580,000. Old Home planners roll their eyes over the city's previous efforts to stem the exodus, such as the "Talkin' Proud" TV commercials of the 1980s. "There was this song, with everyone marching up the steps of City Hall like Rocky," says Ethan Cox, a psychology professor at Buffalo?s D'Youville College. "It was contrived. It was clearly a top-down effort, and nobody bought it." Bethlehem Steel, which once employed 22,000 in the city, had just closed. People were talking about leaving more than anything else.

Mr. Cox also dislikes that Buffalo has been dubbed "the City of No Illusions." "It's self-deprecating," he says, "It's saying, 'We know we?re not the best. We know we have problems. We're OK with that?'"

About 64,000 people have visited BuffOldHome.com, reading comments from dozens of happy repatriates. Some of them take shots at other areas of the country: "The South is very fake." "My mortgage here wouldn't even afford me a closet in a crack house in San Francisco." "After four [Florida] hurricanes, I'll take a blizzard any day." (Given how mild last winter was, "global warming is doing wonders for Buffalo," gushes Mr. Nussbaumer.)

Of course, if Old Home Week is a success, it may ruin Buffalo, Ms. Gorman says. "When all 250,000 people move back, we'll have so much traffic, real-estate values will rise, and we won?t be able to get tables in restaurants."

Even so, she says, it will be nice to have everyone home again.