Top 10 Reasons to Love Northeast Ohio - Part 2

This blog is all about relationships. It is patterned after the greatest commandment - "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and you shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:34-40). This is the ultimate enriching life, a life of overflow. Part of home however is where we live.

We live in a community. The gospels are replete with the environment and community that Jesus and the disciples lived. Imagine the gospels without the Sea of Galilee, Capernaum, Samaria, and of course Jerusalem. So it is without apology that I carry on my top 5 reasons why I love my home, Northeast Ohio.

#4 - The Lakefront

If you had asked me the top 10 off the top of my head, I probably would not have listed the lakefront. I don't have a boat and I live 15 miles from the lake. There is also no doubt that the lakefront is underutilized. But I also know that is changing. Cleveland sits on Lake Erie and that makes it a hub of transportation and commercial activity. It is also a hub of recreation. Last Friday, Deb and I volunteered for the Cleveland Metro Parks at Burning River Fest. The festival was at Wendy Park. A year ago, I did not even know where Wendy Park was. We were promoting the new Water Taxi system coming over the next few years. I was privileged to work on this project as part of Leadership Cleveland II. The lakefront is a great asset and the best is yet to come.

 # 3 - The Park System

In my rankings, I could have easily justified this as number one or two. One of the major reasons we moved to Brecksville is because it is at the fulcrum of three different park systems - Cuyahoga National Park, Cleveland Metro Parks, and Summit Metro Parks. All are first rate and they almost seem to blend together. In fact, I used to think they were all kind of one big park system. Again my ignorance. The CNP is one of the top 10 most frequented national parks in the country. It is up there with the Yosemite's of the world. I have a much greater appreciation of our park systems as both a regular user and because of my friendship with a few leaders in CNP and Cleveland Metroparks. I think it is crown jewel. I love getting on my bike and just riding on the Towpath or Bike n Hike.

 #2 - SPORTS...

Hard to believe that I would put sports teams number two given that we haven't won anything since 1964. I was five years old at the time so I have no recollection of the event even though we lived in Euclid at the time. That makes it even more amazing that NE Ohio is still so sports crazy. I submit as proof that the Plain Dealer, our daily paper is almost always half devoted to our crazy sports teams. Count articles on the front page as indirectly related to sports. We have a definite bias as an area towards football - we will support that even if the team stinks which it has since 1999. Now we have added Johnny football - not sure what that will mean. But we also had 455 straight sellouts in baseball and one of the top attendance figures in the NBA for basketball when Lebron was here. Speaking of which - Lebron is back! If you have not seen Frank Calliendo's rendition of Lebron's speech in Morgan Freeman's voice, it is definitely worth a look.

#1 - The People 

A community is only as good as its people. I love the people in this community. By and large, they are down to earth, genuine, mostly humble people. To that point, I get to interact with some pretty successful people and the vast majority are wonderful people. I could not say that about growing up in the East Coast or what I have observed other places. NE Ohioans care about people. We care about our community. The biggest flaw we have is that we tend to have an inferiority complex but I think that is changing. NE Ohio is on a roll baby and it is about time the world sees it for what it is.