Fighting isolation after relocation

When Roberta Eichenholz moved from Pennsylvania to Rockville in 2004, she faced a choice: She could make an effort to get involved in her new community or she could isolate herself in her new home.

Eichenholz chose the first option.

"It was either staring at four walls all day or finding an outlet," said Eichenholz, who moved to the Washington area after her husband, Harold, who works in government, accepted a new job. "You have to make an effort to get to know people," she said. "If you don't make an effort, I guarantee that you'll be pretty sad. You'll be lonely."

With its abundance of military, corporate and government jobs, the region constantly gets an influx of workers being relocated from across the country and abroad.

For Eichenholz, a retired teacher, the solution was the Gaithersburg Area Newcomers Club, which she joined shortly after moving to Rockville. By participating in its activities, she quickly established new friendships. Today, she's the president of the club.

"Those first few days I was here, I remember waking up in the morning and wondering what I was going to do that day," Eichenholz said. "You don't know anyone. You don't know what's available. You don't have any friends. It's not easy."

It's a problem many face when job transfers send them crisscrossing the country. And few areas of the United States see as much corporate relocation as does the Washington area.

Former New York Times reporter Peter T. Kilborn, in his recently published book, "Next Stop, Reloville: Life Inside America's New Rootless Professional Class," identifies the D.C. area as one of the country's "relovilles," places where people, transferred by their employers, move in, stay for three or four years and then move on to another city. Leesburg, Centreville and Gaithersburg are all classic relovilles, according to Kilborn.

"There are always people who try harder to get involved in the community, but so much is working against them," Kilborn said in a telephone interview. "You don't want to be critical of the people who are relocated here. It's sort of natural for them to be removed from the community. It's like when you go camping. You pitch a tent, you clean up and you get out of there."

When researching his book, Kilborn spoke to families who never bothered to hang photos or artwork in their new homes. They didn't want to put nail holes in the walls because they didn't want to bother filling them in once they had to move again.

It's hard for relos to get involved in local politics or community organizations because the spouse who may not be working full time is usually consumed with the busy work of finding doctors, getting their children enrolled in school, finding churches and signing their sons and daughters up for soccer or tennis lessons.

"The rhythm of their lives is such that it's very hard for them to get involved with the community, even if they want to," Kilborn said. "At the most, they sort of get attached to the people in their subdivision. Often, these people have been relocated to the area, too."