DAVID CURTIS "KURT" SLOAN
Loving Father, Faithful Husband, Caring Friend
1965
November 9th,
December 20th,
2024
A Memorial for a Great Man
This site is a memorial for my father, Kurt Sloan. He was loved by many people, and I wanted them all to have a place to pay their respects to his memory and share their own stories.
Pages on this site are constantly being updated. If a page seems unfinished, it is most likely still being edited and/or updated. This whole site should be considered a living document for everyone who loves Kurt to come together and build a community around our memories of him.
Kurt Sloan in Pieces
Kurt In His Own Words
After his diagnosis in May 2022 that showed the cancer had spread, Kurt wrote a pamphlet that he wanted distributed at his funeral so people would know him better. But, the fact that Kurt was a larger than life and dynamic person, this mini-biography was too large to fit in the memorial program. So we decided to include it here for everyone to read. The pamphlet is posted below, unedited, with the pictures he wanted included.
About Kurt
David Curtis "Kurt" Sloan was born on November 9th, 1965, in Lawrence, KS, to David Leroy and Carol Ann Sloan. His mother was a housewife and his father was a financial specialist who moved the family frequently as he advanced his career through different companies. Growing up, Kurt lived in Lawrence, KS, Trenton, NJ, Mansfield, OH, Syracuse, NY, and spent most of his teenage years between Marion, OH, and Las Vegas, NV, where his dad served as Senior Vice President of Finance at Nevada Power and then a similar position at Southwest Gas.
At age 6, Kurt's parents divorced and he, his 1-year-old sister and newborn brother went with his mom to live in Syracuse to be near her family, and he and his siblings would spend summers and Christmas with their dad. At 13, Kurt decided to go live with his dad in Marion, OH, and he lived there until they moved to Las Vegas during his Junior year of high school. Until his dying day, Kurt considered Marion, Ohio, to be his hometown.
As a boy, Kurt desired to be a police officer when he grew up in order to help people and he kept that dream until he got to college at UNLV when a Las Vegas Police Department detective suggested he focus on business to better match his skills and desires. Kurt achieved a Bachelor of Arts in Management Information Systems in 1988 and followed this up with a Masters in Business Administration in 1992. He used this education to get a job in IT support at Valley Bank of Nevada (later incorporated into Bank of America) where he met the love of his life, Leslie Rosenhan, on his first day of work. Kurt continued to work in the Information Technology (IT) field from 1988 until 2023, moving from Bank of America to Andersen Consulting to Parsons Brinckerhoff/WSP where he spent most of his career leading a team of help desk and training specialists and providing various business documentation skills in support of a specialized IT support team for the engineering and infrastructure program management fields.
Kurt was a great lover of music and was an accomplished guitarist, including working as a studio musician at Groove Production Studio in Las Vegas as their staff country guitarist in the early 1990s.
Kurt was what is known as a “dog person,” although he had both dogs and cats growing up, during their 30+ year marriage, Kurt and Leslie had nine dogs, including three dogs before they even had kids. Kurt thought it was incredibly important to raise kids with dogs as it taught them responsibility and unconditional love.
Kurt and Leslie had three children, David Logan, Brady Lamar and Sarah Jayne, and they were the source of his greatest joys at each of their births, proudest moments (watching them grow into the men that they would become) and deepest sorrow (with the unexpected sudden death of Sarah Jayne as a newborn.)
Kurt goes gladly into the Heavenly Kingdom knowing not only will he no longer be in constant pain, but that he’ll get to be with his dad and mom and family (and pets) that went before him, but also knowing that he’ll get to have his daughter by his side as he fulfills the Lord’s plans for him.
Getting to Know Kurt Better
Sports
Kurt loved football above all other sports. He played it in middle school and high school, including breaking his neck in 9th grade playing defensive lineman and often said he would have done it all over again if he could even knowing that he was going to break his neck because he loved the sport that much.
His favorite teams were the Ohio State Buckeyes, the Cleveland Browns and the Denver Broncos. Kurt was a buckeye through and through and his biggest disappointment in life was not being able to attend the Ohio State University with his friends after graduating high school.
Kurt also was a fan of Professional Wrestling as he found it a great way to spend time with, and bond with, his two boys, whether that meant watching it on TV or going to live shows supporting local companies or major organizations making stops in Colorado. Kurt was a huge fan of professional wrestling growing up and collected autographed pictures and displaying them on two walls of their music room for all to see.
Books
Kurt loved reading and especially enjoyed fiction books and had multiple favorites that he read over and over. While there were a number of stand-alone books that he loved, his true passion was finding a great series of books where he could connect with specific characters and watch them develop over time.
-
All-Time Favorite Book: "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexander Dumas
-
Stand Alone Books
-
"Dracula" by Brahm Stroker
-
"The Legend of Huma" by Richard A. Knaack
-
"Devoted" by Dean Koontz
-
"The Martian" by Andy Weir
-
"American Gods" by Neil Gaiman
-
-
Book Series
-
"Monster Hunters International" by Larry Correia
-
"Codex Alera" by Jim Butcher
-
"Harry Dresden Mysteries" by Jim Butcher
-
"Harry Potter" by J. K. Rowling
-
Movies
Another of Kurt's favorite activities was watching movies with his wife and kids. Kurt especially loved comic book movies and comedies but had a wide variety of movies he enjoyed. Some of his favorite movies include:
-
All-Time Favorite Movie: "12 Angry Men" (1957)
-
Favorite Comedy: "The Princess Bride" (1987)
-
Favorite Thriller: "Captain America: Winter Soldier" (2014)
-
Favorite Comic Book Movie: "Captain America: First Avenger" (2011)
-
So Dumb It's Great: "Kung Fu Hustle" (2004)
-
Classic Movies Kurt Thought Everyone Should See:
-
"12 Angry Men" (1957) with Henry Fonda
-
"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" (1967) with Sidney Portier
-
"Sahara" (1943) with Humphry Bogart
-
Music
Music was Kurt's first love. When he was a kid, his aunts turned him onto KISS and Cheap Trick, while his dad got him listening to Chuck Berry, Kenny Rogers, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. This mix of musical influences gave him a very eclectic taste in music. As the music of these different artists filled his soul with happiness, Kurt knew he needed to learn to play the guitar, and he started playing at the age of 13. Over time Kurt learned to play both the electric and acoustic guitar, both 6-string and 12-string, the bass, the banjo, and the ukelele. His grandfather was a professional keyboardist in upstate New York, and it made Kurt incredibly happy that he passed his love of music on to his sons whether that be them both being connoisseurs with wide eclectic tastes in music or Brady's love for multiple instruments as well.
As Kurt grew, his taste in music continued to expand to include Southern Rock (Charlie Daniels, ZZ Top, 38 Special, Lynyrd Skynyrd) and more modern country at the time (Alabama, Restless Heart, New Grass Revival, Lyle Lovett) and more rock and roll acts (Meatloaf, Poison, Guns and Roses) as well as new wave (Sparks) and even some early rap (The Sugar Hill Gang, the Fat Boys). As Kurt grew into adulthood his taste in music moved more into pop-punk and that was the music that seemed to make him happiest (Bowling for Soup, Blink 182, Green Day, Me First and the Gimme Gimmes); in fact, Kurt was very claustrophobic and when he had to have MRI’s as part of his cancer treatment, the technicians would put on a mix of pop-punk as a way to keep him calm while in the tube. The technician at Sky Ridge Medical Center once told Kurt that he always knew it was him coming in when the music request was for “Blink 182 or anything like that”.