Kirk Slone

New Russellville fire chief honored by support

Newly appointed Russellville Fire Chief Kirk Slone could be doing a hundred other jobs based on his eclectic background.

Let’s see — the 48-year-old has a biology degree because he considered following in his dad’s footsteps to become a veterinarian. Slone has enough accounting hours that he is qualified to take the CPA exam, because he loves to work with numbers, and he was an over-the-road trucker back when he was a newlywed.

Not to mention that he’s an avid outdoorsman — a scuba diver, cyclist, snow skier and kayaker.

Being a firefighter hadn’t even come up in conversation until First Baptist Church in Conway burned late one night in 1992. Slone and his wife, Cecelia, were renting a second-floor apartment in an old house across the street on Robinson Avenue when they lived in Conway for a short time.

“We heard a noise, got up and looked out the window just in time to see that dome kind of explode,” he said. “We sat out there on the porch and watched the Conway Fire Department handle that big fire.”

Slone went to the Central Fire Station in Conway and talked to the firefighters about joining, but the department wasn’t testing at the time.

“I got on the phone and called every city in Arkansas that had a university and a fire department because we still had to get our degrees,” he said of him and his wife. “It just so happened that the Russellville Fire Department was about to test.”

He said his wife, before he met her at Arkansas College (now Lyon College), had attended Arkansas Tech University briefly and liked it.

“I came over here, didn’t know a soul and tested and got a job,” Slone said.

In 1992, he was the new guy in the Russellville Fire Department, and Monday, he was named chief. He was battalion chief when Mayor Randy Horton named him interim chief, starting June 6, after former chief John Cochran retired.

Horton said Slone had the “home-field advantage,” but Horton said that wasn’t the only reason he selected Slone from among the top-seven candidates.

“In the end, it was pretty tough because there were some pretty good candidates from all over the country,” Horton said. “When you bring in somebody from outside, they have their own ways; the whole department has to adjust. He was as qualified and had the advantage of being part of the Russellville system. He’s actually one of the architects of it. He’s contributed to the department over years and years. Basically, he did 90 percent of the budget; he has a degree in accounting. He’s very hands-on in the budget process. We’re in the very early stages of the 2017 budget right now. There will be no learning curve for him.”

Horton said Slone has the support of his fellow firefighters, too.

“The rank and file joined around him; I think it’s going to be a good time for the Russellville Fire Department. He was kind of the one they supported and hoped would get it from the very get-go.”

The mayor said Slone has the right temperament and management style for the job, too.

“He’s very humble. He includes all the men, lets them take an active part in kind of running the department, or he will be that way. He empowers whoever’s under him to use their abilities.”

Slone deflected the praise, true to Horton’s description of him.

“I view my role as support. I’m here to try to make sure the department has the resources, the training, the organization to just do the job the way they know how to do it. I think that was recognized by the mayor. Me being named chief has much less to do with me than to do with the job these guys do every day when they come here and get on the truck and take care of the citizens of Russellville,” Slone said.

“I got a lot of support from inside, and that is the absolute biggest honor for me — support from people who have worked for 24 years with me. I cannot say enough about the quality of people who make up the Russellville Fire Department, and I’ve been privileged to be a part of that, and really, that’s the reason I’m here today,” Slone said.

He came to Arkansas when he was 13 by way of Texas. The youngest of three boys, Slone grew up on a cattle ranch in Bay City, Texas, where his father was a veterinarian. Slone’s mother was a nurse. He recalled that the walls of his parents’ home were covered with plaques honoring them for volunteer work.

“I grew up in a very civic, service-oriented family,” he said.

His father got a notion to move to Missouri, where the cattle industry was an even

bigger deal, but a house in Mountain Home caught the family’s attention as they drove through Arkansas, Slone said. His parents didn’t buy that house, but they did buy another one in Mountain Home and settled there.

“It was a good switch, very positive,” he said.

Slone started out in prelaw at what was then Arkansas College in Batesville.

“I thought I wanted to be an attorney; I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” he said. He met his future wife at the college. He attended the school for two years, but the couple decided to elope, so they went to Memphis, and he got a job as an over-the-road truck driver. The adventure-loving couple “took a pause” from school and hit the road with Slone behind the wheel of a big truck.

“It was our home for almost a year,” he said. “We made a lot of good friends.”

The couple always intended to finish their degrees, and they returned to Arkansas and lived in Little Rock for a short time before moving to Durango, Colorado, where Slone attended Fort Lewis College and took accounting classes.

“I loved the school,” he said. “The hard part was during that year, it was so hard to make a living. Everything was seasonal.”

That’s when the couple came to Conway, a burning church sparked his interest in firefighting, and he found the Russellville Fire Department.

“I can’t tell you how much we love the River Valley and Russellville. It’s a great place to live,” Slone said. “The people here are amazing. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”

While working for the Russellville department, he earned a biology degree at Arkansas Tech University in 1998.

In about 2009, Slone said, he had enough leave built up at the Fire Department that he took a job working a couple of months for the Arkansas Division of Legislative Audit. He worked in Harrison auditing a consolidated school district.

“I loved the people I came in contact with through Legislative Audit. What I had a hard time with — this [firefighting] is a very active job; you’re always out, interacting with people, … [performing] high-angle rescue, rappelling, confined-space rescue, water rescue, hazardous-materials-technician response — was I was sitting at a computer 10 hours a day. My body had never hurt so bad.”

The Fire Department is where he feels at home, although it can be stressful.

Slone is not one for war stories, though.

“I don’t know that one [fire] really sticks out,” he said. “I’ve been involved with several very tragic fires involving kids. Those are probably the worst. I’d rather go to a big industrial fire and fight it two days than go to a single fire with a fatality, especially children.”

A chaplain is available, and Slone said the firefighters rely on each other.

“When you live together every third day, you become very much like family. I think most of those, and I know it’s my personal experience — that’s how we deal with it. We will get together as a group, and we talk about it,” he said. “You come up with ways to deal with tragedy and deal with those things. They all affect you. I always describe it as pictures in my head that I wish weren’t there.”

Slone said the department has 56 firefighters. He will oversee construction of a $6.5 million central fire station, which will replace the cramped station that was built in 1977. Ground was broken for the structure in June, and it is scheduled to be completed in October 2017. The plan is to move in by Thanksgiving 2017.

“It’s just exciting; it’s just exciting,” Slone said. “It’ll make our job easier.”

His goals as chief include making a concerted effort to get more diverse and larger numbers of applicants for the Fire Department, getting more involved in the community, and developing and mentoring officers.

“We have a lot of new people. We’re losing a lot of good experience, so one of the things we’re really trying to do is implement a mentoring program — the key word being ‘mentoring,’” he said. “We want to offer a structured training opportunity to prepare these guys for the next level. First off, we’re teaching and training you to be the best firefighter you can be, then offer opportunities if you want to further your career.”

He doesn’t just talk the talk. Slone has been accepted into the National Fire Academy’s Executive Officer Program in Maryland, a four-year program.

He said being named chief was almost a “surreal experience.”

“I was happy doing what I was doing,” Slone said. “It was always one of those things that if the opportunity arose, I would have put my name in the hat, and I did. I don’t know that I ever really thought specifically about it, but I have always taken advantage of training and, whatever position I’m in, tried to do the best I could do.

“This is a fantastic department. The guys that I work with and the people I work with have influenced and made me the person I am. Being named interim and chief has had less to do with anything specifically I have done, as much as being testament to the people who make up this department and the job they have done and the commitment they have.”

Slone said he tells people that he’s never felt like firefighting was a job because he enjoys it so much.

“It’s hard to explain to people, but there has never been a day that I’ve dreaded coming to work,” he said.

And when he retires, he has a lot of other options in his back pocket.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

Upcoming Events