In more traditional times, the next couple weeks would see a lot of former locals coming home for the holidays.
For now, those visits might be limited to FaceTime dinners and Zoom parties.
This does beg the question of what sent these Trojans, Vikings, Titans, Raiders and Panthers off into the wild in the first place.
Brain drain in Henry County
When an area, state or community loses its brightest talent, the community experiences something known as “brain drain.”
“Brain drain” is one of the things the New Castle-Henry County Economic Development Corp. (EDC) looks at. Specifically, ways to reverse it.
“I think it applies to all age groups. There’s skills and talent at every station in life,” said EDC President and CEO Corey Murphy.
The EDC is working with local government leaders and policymakers to build a community that is welcoming to all.
“I think we want our young people to maybe move away,” Murphy went on. “So they can experience the world and gain new perspective and new experiences.”
Where, oh, where have they gone?
The Wonder Years wrote in their song “Hoodie Weather” that “No one knows where they’re going. They just know they want out of here badly.”
The Courier-Times reached out to local graduates who have since created lives away from Henry County. We asked where they’ve gone and why.
Some moved for work, others to get away from their families. Some people traveled across the country to raise their kids in a town not too dissimilar to where they went to school themselves.
This article and the upcoming companion pieces will look at what pulled people away and how local organizations like the EDC are trying to bring them home.
Career opportunities
Many people told us they settled down elsewhere because that’s were the money was.
Butler grad Meredith Sauter stayed in Indianapolis after college.
“Basically, it was really never an option for me to move back home unless I wanted to commute to Indy for work,” Sauter said. “There just aren’t a lot of professional, higher paying jobs in New Castle.”
Ashlinn Fiddler tried moving back to New Castle after graduating in 2005. At the time, she was working 12-hour shifts in a hospital setting in Indianapolis and had to drive back and forth to Indy multiple times a week.
“That drive alone for a year made me decide to go back to Indy,” Fiddler said.
She and her husband are raising their two kids on the southeast side of the city now. Before COVID-19 hit, they liked going to nearby summer and Christmas parades.
Class of ’07 Trojan Morgan (Elyea) Hoggard settled in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she and her husband both work in the medical field at University of Virginia (UVA).
Blue River Valley’s Megan (Winchester) Williams, Class of 2008, is raising two children in her husband’s hometown of Jasper, Texas.
As a teen, Williams couldn’t wait to get out of New Castle. Now that she has children of her own, she’s impressed by the education opportunities and kid-friendly activities she sees here.
“My husband and I frequently talk about moving to Henry County, but we are unsure of career opportunities,” she said. Williams’ degree is in marine biology.
Derek Bogue graduated from New Castle in 1995. His leasing career started in Indianapolis, then took him to Denver and finally San Jose, California.
“My family and I left for more opportunities, both professionally and personally,” Bogue said. “Moving away opened up many doors for us all and while we miss our family every day, our opportunities out West have been boundless.”
Forge Your Path, ‘Come Home’
On a grand scale, the EDC works to bring new job opportunities to Henry County. Murphy and his staff also work to develop environment where local businesses can thrive.
“We also want to have a community where they can come back,” Murphy said.
The Henry County EDC has been working with the East Central Indiana Regional Partnership (ECIRP) on a regional effort called “Forge Your Path.”
Forge Your Path looks to attract talent to East Central Indiana and, as importantly, convince those talented men and women to make lives here.
“’Live, work and play’ doesn’t always happen in the same community or even in the same county,” Murphy said. “Those are arbitrary boundaries.”
STATS Indiana offers tool to show the “commuting flow” of workers into and out of Henry County every day.
STATS Indiana estimated 75 percent of people working in Henry County every day live here already.
The same estimates show nearly half of Henry County workers (47 percent) leave the county every day for work. Of those, around 2,000 head to Delaware County and another 2,000 go to Marion County.
“There is a workforce here,” Murphy said. “If you can shorten somebody’s commute and they already live here, it’s a phenomenal opportunity.”
The EDC even started the “Come Home” series a couple years ago on its website, growinhenry.com, to feature professionals who moved away and have come back to the community.
“We want to show others and we want to show the marketplace that there are opportunities in Henry County and East Central Indiana,” Murphy said.
Murphy pointed out that the new Henry County Creates initiative and the Henry County Business Builders program are another way organizations are working to fight brain drain.
Business Builders is specifically focused on entrepreneurship and growing small businesses.
“This is an environment, this is a community, that you can build a business in,” Murphy said.
The Brain Drain series will continue with a look at cultural and political concerns and local tourism efforts.