Ernest Leroy Sloan, who spent his last years at the Southampton home of his daughter, Romi Sloan, died with his three daughters at his bedside on May 6 after a long illness. He was 74.
Born March 2, 1936, in Oilton, Oklahoma, the first son of Edna and Earnest Sloan, he moved with his family to Watsonville, California, where he graduated from Watsonville High School in l954. Knowing that the family did not have the funds for college, he joined the U.S. Army on January 30, 1955, one day before the GI Bill for education was to expire. He was stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where he trained as a paratrooper before serving in Germany as a member of the 101st airborne division.
He attended Sacramento State College, where he met his first wife, Marylou Williamson, with whom he had three daughters. He then went on to Michigan State University, earning a doctorate in sociology in 1966. He joined the faculty of Florida State University, and later taught at the University of Hawaii and Brooklyn City College.
An expert on race relations and urban violence, he wrote his dissertation on the Pontiac race riots and later was appointed to the commission investigating the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In the late ’70s, he resigned his faculty position to form, with some colleagues, the Center for Policy Research in New York City.
Mr. Sloan gave up an academic life for the last half of his career and held a number of positions in legal and banking firms, including Chadbourne Park and Bank of Boston/Credit Suisse.
A striking man who was often compared to Paul Newman, survivors said, he had a lifelong passion for jazz, and other interests included hiking, American political history, nature photography, Northern California, and cooking. He was always up for a game of cards, which he usually won, survivors recalled, and he could tell a tall tale with the best of them. He loved to travel and in his later years travelled often with his second wife, Lois Gudeon Sloan, to Australia and France; visited his daughter Kelly Sloan many times in both Australia and Germany; and often travelled with his daughter Romi Sloan to such distant locales as Alaska and Costa Rica.
In addition to being diagnosed with Addison’s disease, Mr. Sloan had to deal with Parkinson’s disease for the past 12 years, family said.
He is survived by three daughters, Theresa Lynn Sloan of Nevada; Kelly Dawn Sloan and her husband Douglas Saddy of England; Romi Suzanne Sloan of Southampton; a brother, Richard Sloan of New Mexico; a grandson, Matt Varsen of Connecticut; three granddaughters, Leila Varsen Sundstrom of Nevada and Emma Saddy and Leah Saddy, both of England; a niece, Shari Hickman and her husband Jim of Florida; two nephews, Lance Sloan and his wife LeAnne and Shaan Sloan and his wife Maxine, all of New Mexico; and several great-nieces and nephews.
Plans for an August memorial service will be announced in a future edition of The Press.
In lieu of flowers, donations to Jazz at Lincoln Center, 33 West 60 Street, Floor 11, New York, New York 10023 or East End Hospice, P.O. Box 1048, Westhampton Beach, NY 11978 would be appreciated by the family.
on May 19, 2010