BARRIE SLOAN – STILT WALKER
SARASOTA -- Long before most boys are planning their careers, Barrie Sloan decided to follow in his father’s footsteps -- towering as much as 22 feet off the ground.
Sloan was only 14 when he began performing professionally on stilts with his father, who for many years held the record for walking on the world’s tallest stilts.
The elder Sloan strutted on 22-foot-long stilts -- nearly as tall as telephone poles -- in circuses throughout the United States and Europe beginning in the late 1920s.
Later, the younger Sloan and his acrobat-turned-stilt walker wife moved to the United States and toured with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus.
“It was in his genes,” said retired circus performer Sue Lenz of Venice, Sloan’s second cousin. “His father was a stilt walker. His uncle was a stilt walker. His two aunts were stilt walkers.”
Barrie Sloan also rode a 7-foot-tall bicycle on stilts and appeared in 1962 on “What’s My Line?”
Diagnosed with stomach cancer last summer, he died in Sarasota on March 19 at age 75.
Despite a nasty fall that left him with a broken hip and another with a broken knee, Barrie Sloan spent nearly 50 years rising above the crowds in circus arenas throughout North America and Europe.
After falling on his stilts and breaking his hip at age 34, “they told him he wouldn’t walk again for a year, and he was up doing the stilts again in nine months,” said his wife, Shelagh.
She said her husband, who continued to perform on stilts of various heights until the age of 65, never worried about the risks.
“You don’t think about things like that,” she said. “It was our livelihood. If you don’t work, you don’t get paid.”
He relished the occasional gasps from the audience and took pride in “doing something special that other people couldn’t do,” she said.
The feat required tremendous leg strength. Each stilt weighed 16 pounds.
Sloan was born Nov. 29, 1931, in England into a family with a long tradition of performing.
His grandmother was a member of the Hanneford family, which had been performing equestrian acts in Europe for many generations, Shelagh Sloan said. Barrie Sloan’s grandfather also was an equestrian performer.
Sloan’s father, Harry, who toured with the Ringling circus in 1929, began a stilt walking tradition carried on by his son and grandson. Barrie Sloan and his son, King, began walking on mini-stilts less than 2 feet tall before their second birthdays.
King Sloan performed with his parents for a few years after high school before taking a job outside of show business.
The family’s given name is Yelding, but Barrie Sloan’s father chose the stage name Sloan to distinguish his act from other relatives performing under the family name, Shelagh Sloan said. He took the name from an advertisement on the back of a matchbook for Sloan’s linament, a pain relief balm.
A jovial but strong-minded person with exacting standards, Barrie Sloan considered his years with Ringling Bros. and the European-based Circus Knie among the highlights of his career.
After retiring in 1996 at age 65, he designed and built papier-mache parade floats for the Cole Bros. Circus.
In addition to his wife of 48 years, Sloan is survived by his son, King, of Sarasota; a sister, Phips Hakes of Sarasota; a brother, Poodles Sloan of San Francisco; and two granddaughters.
A memorial service is planned for 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday at Showfolks of Sarasota, 5204 N. Lockwood Ridge Road, Sarasota.
Memorial donations may be made to Showfolks of Sarasota, P.O. Box 1476, Sarasota, FL 34230; or TideWell Hospice and Palliative Care, 5955 Rand Blvd., Sarasota, FL 34238.
Beulah was put in the insane hospital after the birth of William Henry (post partum depression?) she remained all of her life in hospital.William was raised by his father Moody who had a heart condition and was unable to care for himself so William had to do a lot around the house. When he was 16 he took his dads car without permission and his dad shot him point blank with a shotgun. He lived but had a lot of damage to kidneys and liver and lungs. He and Mary had two sons both born in Lebanon, TN and then he got a job in CA. being a well digger. He worked for as long as his damaged body would allow, and then Mary took over. He did the cooking and she worked. William passed away in 2007 in Antioch, CA. Mary was married to William about 39 years. His son has his ashes. I have been blessed to add Mary to my family now, as she married my eldest son last year, she has brought a lot of love and contentment into his life.
I have been doing Mary's genealogy for her, and she has expressed a desire to have Williams family history for her sons. For this reason I am posting this brief history that I hope will be just the beginning.
Thank you for reading this.
Rose Adams