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Lots of people stop off in Des Moines and tell us what a fine place it is. Then they go away and never give us another thought.

This morning, at least one man will prove that he wasn’t kidding when he said he likes it here. You can tell it’s true because he’s showing up for work at Blank Children’s Hospital instead of pulling into a parking lot 350 miles to the east.

David Stark departed last winter for a great job in a nice Chicago suburb, and we couldn’t hold that against him. He was climbing the career ladder.

He left a position as executive vice president and chief operating officer of Iowa Methodist Medical Center and Iowa Lutheran Hospital for the job of president at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Ill. Not bad, huh?

One thing about the career ladder: The rungs below you generally fall away after you’ve used them. The only way to reverse your path is to let go, fall to earth and wind up with broken ankles.

But sometimes you go someplace, and everything looks fine, but it just … doesn’t feel right.

“Early on, it had been very clear that things were not going smoothly on the transition front,” Stark said by phone last week. “It was clear in the first 60 to 90 days.”

He and his wife, Becky, and their four children, ages 4-10, were living in the pleasant Chicago suburb of Glenview. They sampled the city life with family trips to places such as Wrigley Field and Navy Pier, and David and Becky took in a couple of shows.

But try as they might, they were not loving the big city.

“Glenview is a very close-knit community, which is good, but that makes it hard for outsiders to break in,” Stark said.

“There was not nearly the same community feel we had in the Des Moines area,” when the family lived in Des Moines and then Johnston.

Also, there’s the growing realization that this isn’t just a rare traffic jam, it’s your daily routine.

Dave and Becky both grew up in Fort Dodge – they’ve known each other since first grade – and it sounds as if they flat-out missed Iowa. “The move was a stretch for her, to be fair,” Stark said. “She knew this was a great opportunity for me professionally, and she wanted to support that. We knew it was not going to be the easiest thing for her and the kids.”

After only a few months, he flipped the switch. Imagine his new employers’ reaction when the guy they had just put in charge told them that, all in all, he’d rather be in Des Moines. They made him a sweeter offer, but Stark turned it down.

Fortunately – not everybody gets to take this kind of mulligan – Eric Crowell, Stark’s old boss at Iowa Health – Des Moines, was willing to give him a great job back here. He’s now the president and chief operating officer at Blank and executive vice president of Iowa Health.

Crowell and Stark had been talking by phone every couple of weeks, and finally, according to Crowell, “He said, ‘You said you’d keep the light on for me,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d use it for five or seven years.'”

Crowell had no trouble understanding the urge toward Iowa, though. An East High graduate, he “went away for 20 years and couldn’t wait to come back.”

Fortunately, the search for a new Blank president was still in its early stages, and Crowell was happy to plug Stark into the opening. “Do you really want to do this?” some people asked Crowell. “And I said, ‘Damn right I do.'”

People at Advocate Lutheran who have Des Moines connections understood, too, Stark said. “Some people say this is too quick, but in my heart I know we did give it enough time,” he said.

He had a great job in a great city, but there’s a lot more to life than that.

“Nothing replaces the happiness of my family,” he said.

Not bad, huh?