Follow You Follow Me

By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
The job sounds great -- pay raise, plush office, prestigious title and a welcoming staff. Just one drawback -- it will require a move. That's a familiar scenario for rising executives and ambitious professionals, one that can require leaving behind a home, extended family and cherished friendships.
But the situation can be even more difficult for the spouse who's asked to come along.
While both are starting all over, the process of finding new friends and fitting into a new community is easier for the one with a new job to serve as a base.
Diane Price of Ellsworth Township, Katy Shroder of Howland and Laura Lewis of Boardman have all been there.
Price was happy working as a lab technician in southeastern New York state until February, when her husband, Douglas, decided to make a career change, accepting a position as a professor of civil and chemical engineering at Youngstown State University.
Six months later, Price loves her new home in the country. She just got a job at a lab in Hermitage, Pa.
Shroder says she's still adjusting to the move now, three years after her husband, Robert, signed on as executive vice president and chief operating officer of Humility of Mary Health Partners.
A licensed psychologist, she held on to her successful private practice in Akron for several months after relocating here. Finally, the rigors of daily commutes on wintry roads persuaded her to start her professional career anew in the Mahoning Valley.
And Lewis was an experienced neonatal intensive care nurse in Akron until the medical career of her husband, a plastic surgeon with a private practice in Canfield, made relocation necessary. Now the mother of three children under 5, she has learned to adapt quickly after moving five times in their six years of marriage.
"This is it," she said with a resolute grin. "This time, we're staying."
Price knew a move was coming when her husband of 10 years announced his plan to switch from business to teaching, but she was skeptical when he landed a position at YSU. "I knew about the problems the steel mills had in Youngstown, and I knew the economy wasn't so great," she said.
Her perception of the Valley has improved now that the couple and their daughter have moved into their new home, a 1920s-vintage refurbished colonial on a country road in rural Ellsworth Township. "The only negative is the road -- we wish they'd pave it," she said, gazing out at the rural landscape outside.
Price was working at International Paper Co. as a lab technician before the couple moved to the area, and her bachelor's degree in medical technology had helped her to find other private lab and hospital lab positions in the past.
Her job search here took longer than expected, but Price said the Valley's low cost of living -- much lower than their previous home in New York -- helped offset the temporary income reduction.
She began work a week ago at BioRemedial Technology in Hermitage.
During her job search, Price immersed herself in volunteer work as a tutor of inner-city children, and she joined the Youngstown Area Newcomers Club, a women's group designed to help new arrivals feel at home.
"I needed that," she said. "It's been easy for Doug to meet people through his job at YSU, but it wasn't so easy for me at home."
The couple also joined the Western Reserve United Methodist Church in Canfield right away, and that helped them feel more a part of the community, she said.
Many moves: Career-related relocations have been a part of Dr. Shroder's life since she married her husband, Robert, 22 years ago. The couple has moved five times since their wedding day.
They and their three children had become very comfortable in Akron after a 12-year stay. She had earned her doctorate in psychology and had her own private child psychology practice, her husband was a hospital administrator.
Then, two job offers rocked the boat. Robert was offered a choice of two new hospital administration promotions, one in Youngstown and the other in Boca Raton, Fla.
The children were impressed with the prospect of living in Florida, but Dr. Shroder was not. Upon visiting the city, she said, she noticed the maze of portable classrooms around the schools, the lack of public swimming pools and tennis courts, the houses without basements.
"This was not a family community," she said. "I remember sobbing on the plane -- and I'm a person who doesn't cry easily. I kept saying: "Our children will never play ping pong again!"
The family voted 4-1 to go to Florida, but Dr. Shroder's single vote won out, and her husband accepted the Youngstown job. The family moved to Howland, but she admits she stubbornly held onto her private practice in Akron and her part-time job as a school psychologist.
"I think I was actually the last one in the family to adjust. I absolutely loved my job, and I threw myself into my work. For months I commuted back and forth to Akron," she said, then added with a grin, "I was in my car a lot -- you should have seen all the radio contests I won."
Finally, weary of the long drive and concerned about struggling on icy roads through another winter, she pulled up stakes and focused on starting her career over in Trumbull County. She's building her private psychology practice for children in Cortland and works part-time as a school psychologist for the Maplewood Local Schools in Trumbull County.
But Dr. Shroder said she learned the hard way that success can't always be duplicated.
Soon after joining Christ Episcopal Church in Warren, she planned to offer a series of parenting classes like those she'd taught successfully in Akron.
"In Akron they were always packed and there was a waiting list," she said. "When it came time for my first class here, only one lady in her 70s showed up. She and I had a wonderful conversation, but it was a humbling experience for me."
Undaunted, she tried other projects. She found a new role in the church as a communion distributor, initiated a peer mediation program in the Howland school and helped start a baby-sitter training course at HMHP facilities in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.
She has made friends through the church, by joining the Greater Youngstown Junior League and just by being involved in her children's activities.
"I think when I came here I was saying: OK God, meet me in Warren," she said, "But he was trying to tell me he was already here.
"I've learned that, if you dwell on the miserable, it will happen. When you move, you have to look for opportunity in your new community."
Fact of life: Multiple relocations have also been a fact of life for Lewis since she and her husband married in 1995. They moved once while he was doing his eight-year medical residency in Akron, relocated to Manhattan for a year, then spent two years in Peoria, Ill. before coming to the Valley.
Living in Manhattan was on bright spot in the couple's series of moves. Lewis said the big city was exciting and they made the most of it, visiting all the sights that many of their Manhattan friends hadn't seen for years. She missed her family, though, especially on holidays.
Peoria was probably the hardest move, she said, because it is a small town where most people have known each other for years and aren't eager to make new friends.
Lewis is proud of her experience as a neonatal intensive care nurse, but she said she ran into some discouraging roadblocks when she tried job hunting in Peoria. She wanted to work part time at a local hospital, but managers weren't interested because she hadn't had her training or experience there.
When it was time for Dr. Lewis to start his private practice last summer, his wife spoke up. She wanted to live near family, and the Youngstown location was ideal for proximity to their relatives in Kent, Akron and Cleveland.
This move has been less difficult than the others, she said, partly because she's closer to home but also because they've learned from experience.
"It gets easier with each move," she said, rocking her infant daughter while her toddler son tugged at her skirt. "You have to be patient, but you also have to be proactive. If you want to be a part of the community, you have to make it happen.
"My advice would be: Join something right away. Join a church, join a club, find something. When you belong to something, you feel more like part of the community."
For the Lewises, joining St. Charles Catholic Church in Boardman helped ease the transition, she said.
They've been impressed with the Valley's recreational opportunities, and they've noticed a similarity to what they saw in Manhattan -- here, too, she said, the locals tend to ignore attractions that keep tourists in awe.
"Every city we've lived in, we've noticed that the people who grew up there will talk about the negatives," she said. "When you move somewhere, you can't get discouraged by that. You have to have a good attitude and get to know the place, explore."
Having three young children to care for creates its own problems. "Sometimes the only adult I talk to all day is a telemarketer," Lewis joked.
But she said people in the couple's Boardman neighborhood have been friendly and welcoming, and she's already feeling at home. "It's been easy here," she said.
vinarsky@vindy.com