Clay Sloan
Park Ranger, Sharon Woods Metro Park
Clay Sloan is talking with Communications Coordinator, Virginia Gordon
About me
I grew up in Marion, Ohio, with my mom and dad and younger brother, Tucker. I went to Marion Harding High School, which was named after Warren G Harding, who lived most of his life in Marion and who became the 29th president of the United States. It’s a small town, with about 36,000 people, and is about 50 miles north of Columbus. I made a lot of very good friends in Marion and we remain very close today.
MY BEST FRIEND DAN AND THE LURE OF THE ROBOTS
My best friend Dan, and our other really close friends, Grant and Jake, were in the same year at high school and we all went to Ohio State. Dan got married just last month and I was one of his six groomsmen. We were voted in as ‘Best Friends Forever’ by our senior class, and we were labelled as ‘Best Friends’ in our high school senior year book. Dan got me interested in robotics and we competed in the VEX Robotics competitions for five years, starting in 8th grade. This global program for middle and high school students involves competitions at local, state, regional and then world levels.
We started as part of a club at our high school. In our first year, our team went on a massive winning streak and went all the way to that year’s world finals. More than 14,000 teams started out at local levels, from over 50 countries, so to finish fourth out of 14,000 was a really big deal for us. It was all about using our STEM skills, in particular mechanical engineering skills, to build our robots using component pieces acquired from VEX Robotics, and our math and computer programming skills.
I DROVE A ROBOT ON ESPN2
The world finals were held in Anaheim, California that year, and I appeared on ESPN2 as the driver of one of our robots during the group stage qualifiers. My mom saw me on ESPN and texted my dad, who was with us at the arena, to say Clay is on the television! She hadn’t expected to see me on TV, as driving wasn’t my usual role. A ‘driver’ sits on a platform above the robot arena and uses a hand-held remote to control the movements of their robot to accomplish their goals and defeat the opposition.
It was only by a quirk that I happened to be a driver in the World Tournament qualifiers in Anaheim. The competition structure requires teams to work in alliances of three teams, and go head to head against another alliance over a series of three matches for each round of the competition. Each team of the alliance has its own robot, and two robots per side are in the arena for each match, meaning all the alliance member teams compete in two of the three matches. In the finals, our alliance partners were a team from China and a team from Cummings, Georgia.
Come the third match of one round, one of our alliance partners had a problem and couldn’t compete. Our third alliance had already played in two matches, so the VEX organizers told us our team would have to compete with two robots in this third match in the series, and use one of their own standby robots. Incidentally, that standby robot was named Happy. And that’s how I got on ESPN, as Happy’s driver. I’m happy, pun intended, to say that we won against our opponents in that particular match, which sent us through to the next round. We had to play 30 matches, in all, over the three days of the World Finals. We reached the World Finals in two other years as well, although we never finished as high as fourth in subsequent finals.
AZT3C
Our own robot was named AZT3C (pronounced Az-tech) and I played a prominent role in building it, and new versions of it, each year. I studied mechanical engineering and CAD for all four years of high school. I also helped Dan to write code to program AZT3C for the autonomous phase of our matches. For every match, lasting four minutes, robots performed according to programming only for an initial autonomous phase, and then a longer remote-driver-controlled phase followed. For our first year, AZT3C had six wheels and could move through the 12 foot x 12 foot arena really quickly. It was 18 inches high, wide, and long, with a belted ramp that could capture some of the balls that needed to be collected from one end of the arena and dropped into cylinders at the other end of the arena, to score points. And all while avoiding the efforts of competing robots to hinder its progress. But our AZT3C was a beast and we defeated almost all comers quite easily.
OTHER CLUBS IN HIGH SCHOOL
I was always wanting to be involved in extra-curricular activities. As well as the robotics club, I was a member of a comedy club. We would use a school room or school cafeteria and invite friends and family to a free comedy show. It was mostly improvised.
So-called Improv was a big thing in comedy those days. We did some scripted comedy too, mainly silly skits, some of which I wrote. We did a few comedy games involving the audience, and then had individual members of our club do some short stand-up comedy routine. I also felt it let me shine brightly as myself when I was there on a stage.
I was also a member of the high school golf club and was on the varsity team. I didn’t think I was especially good, but I did enjoy it. I don’t play much anymore, although I play an occasional round with friends.
FILM MAKING
Even though I was very skilled at engineering and programming, I never felt these were things I wanted to do professionally. When I began thinking about college, I wanted to study film making. I had quite a lot of experience of it already. My mom had a film camera, and even as young as age five, I used to take it and film my friends, usually just playing, and later on, acting out scenes from our favorite movies. I learned how to edit video when I was seven.
Later on, I got some software that allowed me to record what was on my computer screen, which meant I could capture footage from any video source, such as YouTube, for example, or from the video games that I enjoyed playing, such as Star Wars Battlefront and Minecraft. With my video editing skills, I could use captured video in lots of different creative ways. YouTube was becoming a big inspiration for me. By high school, I had my own YouTube channel, which I ran for a few years. At one time I had 70 videos on it. In the early days, I made long videos, lasting about an hour or more. But YouTube guidelines suggested that videos lasting just ten minutes or less were much more likely to attract an audience. So I began editing my videos into chapters.
COLLEGE
I spoke to an advisor at OSU about my potential major. I already had some college credits to hand from five different-college level courses I had taken in high school. Unfortunately, OSU didn’t have a film making program, but my advisor sold me on the idea of becoming a Film Studies major in the Arts and Sciences Department. I started at OSU in the fall of 2018. It wasn’t long before I came to a realization that I didn’t need a degree in film making in order to make films. I could just do it! So I soon changed my major to History.
I had always had a keen interest in history and geography. There were various themes available for the history classes. I chose one titled ‘Peace and War,’ with the main focus on the Renaissance period, roughly 1400 to 1800 AD, and ancient times, going back to ancient Egypt, Rome and Greece. I was really enjoying the study, but then, by my junior year, I came to another realization – that if I continued with history as my major, my most-likely career path would become something like a history teacher. I developed a dread of the idea of standing or sitting in a classroom for decades to come, trapped inside all the time and forever talking about the same things over and over. I knew that wasn’t what I wanted.
CRIMINOLOGY
My mind went back to a quiz taken in high school, one which asked around 200 questions and was intended to determine what career path you were best suited to. And I recalled that my number one career path, according to that quiz, suggested I go into public service. I have always had an instinct of wanting to care for people, to offer kindness and instruction, and basically just to help people.
In those public service areas, there were no majors for firefighters, or for paramedics, but there was one for the police, and so I began to think, well, I’ll try to become a cop and help people that way. As I’m always a calm sort of person, I thought I would be good at it. I was a frequent Dean’s List Student at OSU and I had completed all of my Gen Ed classes, so I went with Criminology as my major. The classes were something very different and also very interesting. By my senior year, I needed to think about which area of law enforcement I would go into after college. There were options such as becoming a city police officer, or a sheriff’s deputy, or a state highway patrol officer. There was some bad press going around for the police in general in those days. I did various research about the top ten careers to do with a criminology degree, and I was surprised to find park ranger up there near the top of the list. I honestly didn’t know, then, that park rangers are actually cops. A park ranger’s jurisdiction is limited to the park’s they represent, and sometimes to adjacent roadways and properties.
A couple of months later, I got an email from my academic advisor, saying we needed to talk about the internship I needed to do as part of my degree. I told him of my interest in becoming a park ranger and he guided my search for internship opportunities. Metro Parks was then looking for some seasonal park rangers, which would qualify for my internship requirement.
METRO PARKS — MY BEGINNING
We were now in 2022 and there were still some Covid restrictions. Interviews for the seasonal ranger positions at Metro Parks were conducted over Zoom, rather than in person. I did my interview and was offered a seasonal ranger position at Glacier Ridge and Homestead Metro Parks for that summer. I found the work really engaging and loved every minute of it. In common with other seasonal rangers that summer, I put in an application for a more permanent position with Metro Parks. Because I still had one full semester of study left at OSU, I put in my application for a part-time ranger. My manager at Glacier Ridge, Jerry, suggested I changed that to a full-time ranger position, and said Metro Parks could accommodate my class needs. So that’s what I did. It led to another interview, which went pretty well. I got word that I was going to be offered a full-time ranger position, although it hadn’t yet been decided which park I would be stationed at.
During the fall, I continued to work at Glacier Ridge and Homestead, usually doing about 30 hours a week while continuing my studies. I graduated from OSU in December 2022, and in that same month I started my full-time duties as a park ranger here at Sharon Woods Metro Park.
From January through May of 2024 I trained at the Ohio Police Academy, which all full-time rangers do, and qualified to become an official Commissioned Peace Officer. Effectively, a cop in the parks.
LOVING THE WORK
As a park ranger, I love the frequent chance meetings I have with visitors to the park and the opportunity they provide for positive interactions with people, young and old alike. It gives me a chance to educate people about nature in the park and all our efforts to preserve it, and why that is so necessary. My interactions with kids are always especially pleasing and rewarding. Simply handing out stickers to them always puts a smile on their faces. And kids love to get close to my truck. I like to invite them into the truck and will sometimes take them on a short ride through the park. Recently, we had a number of groups at the park celebrating Eid. Most of them were Afghani and I had about 20 kids come up to the truck, all very excited. I just asked them to hop in, and I let them hoot the siren and took them for a ride, some in the cab and some in the truck bed. I think I helped make a good day into a very good day for them.
I really like to engage with kids at the park and let them know that it’s always okay to approach someone in uniform. Of course, it’s not always about an informal and friendly interaction when I come across people in the park. The main facet of a park ranger’s role is law enforcement. Simply having a ranger present in the park can help to guide people’s behavior for the better. If uniformed park rangers weren’t seen in the parks, people would be much more likely to take advantage and leave trash in the parks or even start fires. Sometimes I encounter people doing those very things and I treat it as an educational as well as a law-enforcement matter. I like to speak to people doing something they shouldn’t be doing and ask them to tell me why they are doing it. Which always leads to an opportunity for me to explain to them why what they are attempting to do is bad for the park, and bad for other visitors.
One time, I came across someone in a prominent, public area of the park who had set a large aluminum sheet down on the grass, and laid coals on top of that. He was going to set the coals alight when I encountered him. I stopped him, of course, but I asked him what he was doing and why. He actually had a butchered goat in his van and was intending to put it on a spit and cook it over the coals, with his family due to come to the park for a celebratory feast later in the day. So, no harm done, and it had been a good teaching moment.
I explained to the man that, even though the coals were on an aluminum sheet, it could still start a fire in the park, and even if not, the heat would damage the grass. After explaining why he couldn’t do what he was intending to do, I did talk to him about a fire pit we have at the park, and said he was welcome to use that to cook his coat. I showed him to the fire pit and his family did indeed come to the park later to share in a celebratory meal.
I also enjoy just exploring the park, going off trail and seeing what it has to offer. Sharon Woods is a beautiful park, and made even better, I believe, by the diversity of people who visit us regularly. In the park neighborhood we have one of the highest proportions of Somalis and middle eastern peoples anywhere in the city, and they visit the park in high numbers. I love to stop and chat with them and learn about their culture and interests.
A MEMORABLE INTERACTION WHERE I MADE A DIFFERENCE FOR SOMEONE
While walking in the park one day, I was approached by a visitor who reported that a man had fallen off his bike, hit his head, and was bleeding badly. I quickly found this unfortunate gentleman just off our Multiuse Trail. He was on the ground, but sitting up, with blood all over his head. I spoke to him, told him I’m Ranger Sloan and asked if he could tell me what had happened. He was very dazed. He said he didn’t remember what had happened, and in obvious distress, told me he couldn’t even remember his name. I called for an ambulance. While we waited, I continued talking to him, and offered him reassurance. He had several head gashes and I asked him why he hadn’t been wearing a helmet. He told me he thought he had been wearing a helmet. And further down the trail, I could see something that looked like a strap. I went to look, and also saw his helmet nearby, broken into two pieces.
As St Ann’s Hospital is opposite the park, directly across Cleveland Avenue, it wasn’t long before an ambulance arrived. But I was amazed to see it actually driving down our steep sledding hill, with it lights on full beam and its siren blaring. The part of the Multiuse Trail where the man had fallen from his bike was very near to the sledding hill. I helped the man into the ambulance and he was driven away.
In many cases I wouldn’t get to hear anything else about developments. But about a week later, I was called to the office by my manager, who told this gentleman who had had the accident was on the phone and wished to talk to me. He thanked me for helping him and said that his own memories had returned, although he still couldn’t remember the accident itself. I asked if he remembered someone shining a light into his eyes, and that then seemed to come back to him. I said that had been me, as I had asked him to follow the light as I moved the flashlight, checking him for concussion symptoms. There had been no pupil movement or eye tracking, which had made me very concerned for him. He knew someone had helped him, but he hadn’t remembered my name.
He asked if I had any thoughts on how the accident may have occurred. I had thought about it already, and I had pieced together what I believed had happened. He had been biking down a steep slope on the trail. There is a sign at the high point of the trail, urging drivers to check their breaks and reduce speed. Down the slope, there is a sharp left turn on the trail. I told the gentleman that he may have been riding a little too quickly. For the position where I found him sitting, and the location of his bike on the opposite side of the trail, and his broken helmet in two pieces about 15 feet farther away on the trail, I assumed that his back wheel had gone into the lip just off the trail, causing his bike to tilt and fall, and throw him off it. He had hit his head on the paved trail, and a portion of his helmet on the left side had broken away, separating the strap, and flinging the entire helmet free from his head. I believed he had then rolled across the trail, coming to a stop on the opposite side of the trail from his bike. His bike, remarkably, was pretty much undamaged. He thanked me again, this time for helping him to picture how the accident may have happened. I was just happy to know that he was more or less uninjured and that his main memories had come back to him.
Traveling – places I’ve been, places I’d love to go
When I was younger, we had lots of family vacations. We want to the Outer Banks in North Carolina several times, and also went to Florida. Later on we’d go on hiking vacations in Maine, and to the White Mountains in New Hampshire and Vermont, and to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. But then, for my High School graduation reward, we took our first international trip as a family.
OUR EUROPEAN VACATION
We flew to Dublin and spent just a day there, before flying on to London. Because of my love of history, I was excited to visit the museums and historic buildings. The most interesting place was the Tower of London. There are various buildings on the site. The White Tower was built in the 1070s, almost a thousand years ago. We did the official tour to learn all about the Tower of London’s history. It was originally a stronghold and a luxurious residence for kings, but later it became a prison for high-born citizens accused of treason or other major offences. We came across a little church inside the tour, where many famous people, such as Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell, would have prayed before their executions.
My mom, in particular, wanted to go on the London Eye, which is a huge cantilevered observation wheel, the tallest in the world, overlooking the River Thames. The observation pods go about 400 feel in the air at their highest point. We went to the site, but I told my mom there was no way I was getting on it. I don’t mind walking in the mountains, where my feet remain on solid ground, but I’m scared of heights in general, and nothing would induce me to get on the London Eye. My mom protested that it was absolutely safe, but I said nope, with my luck, it would probably break apart when we got to the top. So none of us did it. We went and had fish and chips in a pub instead.
FRANCE
After a few days in London, we took the Eurostar to Paris. This high-speed passenger train goes under the English Channel, which is a narrow arm of the Atlantic Ocean. It takes just two hours and 15 minutes to get from the English capital to the French capital. After we arrived at Paris, we took a planned trip to Normandy, to see the D-Day landing sites and to tour the beaches. Of many wonderful sites, the most moving was a little church that had been used as a hospital for injured allied soldiers during the landings. A German mortar shell had actually hit the roof of the church. You can still see blood stains on the pews, where wounded soldiers lay as they awaited treatment. The church has replaced its stained glass windows with windows that show paratroopers parachuting down onto the nearby beaches.
When we returned to Paris, we visited many of the tourist sites, like the Eifel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe, but our most memorable visit was to the Paris Catacombs, an ossuary with the skulls and other skeletal remains of more than six million people, arranged in a subterranean loop of well over mile, and about 20 meters below the city streets. It was a very moving visit, but very macabre.
BRUSSELS
Our next stop of our two-week vacation was to Brussels in Belgium. I wanted to see the battlefield of Waterloo, which is about 30 miles south of the Belgian capital. We spent the whole day at Waterloo and I visited all the sites I had read about. I was particularly moved by visiting Hougoumont Farm, where British foot soldiers adopted square formations, with bayonets, and resisted several charges by the French cavalry and infantry, protecting the Duke of Wellington’s right flank. The French attacks on Hougoumont were finally broken, in an action that Wellington himself declared to be instrumental in the ultimate success of the British and Prussian forces at the Battle of Waterloo.
We went back to Brussels, and I really felt very comfortable there, so much that I think it’s my favorite place anywhere outside the US. The people there are very down to earth and really friendly, and they all seem to speak English. And the Grand-Place, in the center of the city, is really cool. It’s a huge public square, with lots of opulent architecture, including the city’s town hall, which has a flamboyant pinnacle atop a tower, which is itself topped by a gilt metal statue of city’s patron saint, Saint Michael, slaying a dragon. My brother Tucker thought it his favorite place on the trip too. My mom preferred London. And my dad was more taken by our next stop on the vacation, Berlin.
BERLIN
We flew to Berlin from Brussels. I would say it was my second-favorite place on the trip, just behind Brussels. I loved visiting the Brandenburg Gate, and the German parliament building, and also the Holocaust Memorial, which was a very sobering experience for all of us. I did discover a great love of German food, especially their pork sausages and fries, all topped with the famous currywurst sauce. It went down a treat with a Pilsner, a German-style beer.
My family does have German ancestors, so maybe I was predisposed to love the food. I did a DNA analysis, which showed my genetic makeup to be 52% Germanic, with the rest split between British, Irish and Scandinavian.
A STORY ABOUT THE BERLIN WALL
We went to the site of the Berlin Wall and then had a drink at a nearby beer garden. An old man working there told us a story that we found fascinating. He said that he lost all contact with his brother when the Berlin Wall went up in 1961. The wall completely enclosed West Berlin, which was a part of West Germany, isolated in the East. His brother was in the eastern part of Berlin when the wall was suddenly barricaded, and so, along with countless others, he was stuck in East Germany. When the wall was torn down in 1989, and free movement between east and west Berlin was allowed, the man talking to us said he was working at another bar when a man came in saying he was looking for his brother. And our man said that he, too, was looking for his brother, who had been trapped in the east. And then they gave each other their names and realized that they were each the brother they were seeking.
ANOTHER EUROPEAN TRIP
In 2021, as the world began to recover slowly from the Covid restrictions, airline tickets were going really cheap. Along with two friends from middle-school, Nick and Chase, and Chase’s girlfriend, Lissette, we intended to fly to Japan. But Japan declared a new Covid emergency and our tickets to fly there were refunded as airline points. So we changed our plans and went, instead, to Italy and Spain. We spent time in Rome, Florence, Venice and Madrid. It was a great trip, overall, although there were still mask mandates in place almost everywhere.
We had one crazy evening in Florence. Nick had bought a calligraphy set and wanted to try it out at the Air BnB we were staying at. But he left his bottle of ink open, and accidently knocked it over. All the ink ran out and fell onto a yellow cushion. Nick and I went off into the streets looking to find some shop to buy cleaning supplies. We walked about two miles before we found a convenience store. Neither of us spoke Italian, and the shop owner didn’t speak much English, but eventually we managed to convey what we needed. We returned to the Air BnB, soaked the cushion cover in our new cleaning solution, and then banged it into a washer. And amazingly, all the ink came out! I don’t think Nick ever tried his calligraphy again.
My favorite food and desert
I already mentioned currywurst. I was with my dad and we went to a German restaurant over here and we had currywurst. It reminded me just how much I had loved it in Berlin. And now, it’s my favorite thing to make for myself at home, and for friends, when they come over. I just buy pork sausage from any supermarket, and pan fry it so I get a real sizzle. Then I air fry frozen French fries, and then cover it all with a warmed up authentic German curry sauce, Zeisner, that I found I could buy on Amazon. It makes the ideal currywurst. I love it and cook it a lot!
My favorite dessert, although it’s more a snack than a dessert, is jaffa cakes. I can eat an entire packet of these in a single sitting, they’re that good. They’re a British staple, but you can get them at World Market or on Amazon. They have a sponge cake layer at the bottom, with a tangy orange jam in the middle and then dark chocolate at the top. When we were in London, I ate about 300 of them in three days!
My favorite entertainment
When I was studying history at OSU, on the peace and War theme, I got really interested in HEMA, which stands for Historical European Martial Arts. I did some re-enactments with friends while I was at college, and we dueled using a two-handed long sword, or my favorite, a hand and a half sword. It’s sometimes called a bastard sword. It had a grip that is long enough for two hands, but the balance of the sword makes it ideal to use as a single-handed sword as well. That versatility made them very dangerous. I like them so much that I have a tattoo of one on the inside of my left forearm. To make the peace and war theme complete, I intend to get a tattoo of a dove for the upper part of my forearm.
LEGO — MY CURRENT OBSESSION
In my down time, I’m completely obsessed with making things from Lego pieces. It all plays into my love of history, such as the Pyramids of Giza that I made with one Lego set, but it also plays into my love of Star Wars, as I have a few Star Wars related Lego sets. I’m passionate about Star Wars. I even love the prequels, even though most people seem to dislike them. I have four sets of shelves at home, all filled with my Lego constructions. Some other architectural Lego pieces I’ve made include Himeji Castle in Japan, which has more than 2,100 Lego pieces, and the even more impressive Neuschwanstein Castle, in Bavaria, which has almost 3,500 Lego pieces.
But, the biggest and best is yet to come. With my next pay check, I’ll have saved enough to buy the Star Wars Venator-Class Republic Attack Cruiser. When built, it is almost 4 feet long and contains more than 5,300 Lego pieces.
THE BUNDESLIGA
When I found out about my German heritage, and then discovered that our family roots are in Baden-Württemberg, I was researching the area. There is a soccer team, TSG Hoffenheim, which plays in the top level of German soccer, the Bundesliga. I decided to make them my team and I quite often watch their games on ESPN or YouTube.
What Sharon Woods Park Manager Nicholas Brewer says about Clay
“Clay is an excellent ranger. He is great with the public and meticulous with details. He is a student of his craft and is always happy to share his knowledge with new staff. He is fun to be around and I am grateful he works with us at Sharon Woods.”