Behind the Parks: Meet Renee Telfer at Metro Parks HQ

Renee Telfer
Human Resources Director

Hometown and Background

I was born in Beckley, West Virginia, but my family moved to Columbus when I was just nine months old. My dad got a job here. I’ve always considered Columbus my home town. We lived in the north end of Columbus and I went to Northland High School. We have quite a lot of Columbus City Schools graduates here at Metro Parks, including several from Northland. There is something of a directors’ rivalry here about which is the best high school. It’s Northland, of course, but Executive Director Tim Moloney went to Whetstone High School and tries to claim Whetstone as the best.

I was in the Class of ‘84. Back then, Northland Mall was still open on Morse Road and it was a major teenage hangout, with a cinema and an arcade with video games. I loved playing Centipede and Frogger. One of my favorite Seinfeld episodes was the one in which George buys a video console to try to maintain for ever his high score on Frogger. I can definitely relate to George on that one. We recently bought an Eighties style video console for home, which has both Centipede and Frogger on it. We affectionately call it Telfer’s Time Machine. It reminds me of the all the fun times I had at that arcade back then. When I start my retirement at the end of January one of my goals is to beat my own high Frogger score!

I started college at OSU in fall of 1984, and with an undecided major, as I had no clear idea what I wanted for a future career. Music was one option, and I took music courses, as I had been heavily involved in the music program at high school. I played the flute initially, but later switched to playing the bassoon. I played in the school’s symphonic band and orchestra. I was selected to play with the Columbus Symphony Youth Orchestra and played bassoon with them for two years, in 1983 and 1984. We played multiple concerts at various Columbus venues, including The Palace Theatre, Mershon Auditorium at OSU, and at Vet’s Memorial. I remember JS Bach’s Fugue in D-minor as one of my favorites, but playing Tchaikovsky’s Suite from The Nutcracker at our Holiday Concerts was perhaps best of all. I had also played alto saxophone in our high school jazz band, and I thought that maybe becoming a high school band director might be a possible career choice. After taking a number of music theory classes, and getting the opportunity to speak with a number of high school band directors, I gathered that this wouldn’t be a particularly high-paying career. That definitely colored my thinking against music as a career move.

Interestingly, as an aside, about four or five years ago, I was at a Giant Eagle store in Upper Arlington and they had an ensemble group from The Columbus Symphony Orchestra playing there. I stopped to listen and recognized the bassoon player. She had been my private-lesson bassoon teacher about 35 years earlier. I chatted to her when they took a break.

Towards the middle of my second year at OSU, I dropped music from my electives. I had also signed up to study criminology classes, with one of my thoughts being that maybe I might become an attorney. When I left OSU, I had enough credits in criminology to graduate with a minor in that discipline, but career-wise, choices for a career in criminology were limited for a young female in the 1980s. I knew that I didn’t have the personality to be a police officer, corrections officer or probations officer, and going on to law school struck me as being prohibitively expensive. I’m so grateful for the advice of a career counsellor, who suggested to me that I try the Human Resources and Labor Management track, which was a Major within the College of Business. She explained about the importance of interaction with people in HR and saw something in my personality that would fit well with that kind of career move. It made perfect sense to me. So, from my third year onward, I committed 90% of my time to my HR major. Because I had dabbled so much in other possible majors, I had to devote an extra year, a fifth year, of studies at OSU, and graduated in June 1989.

There were few internships back then, and at that time you were kicked off your parents’ health insurance immediately after graduating, so it was important to get full-time work as quickly as possible. I started working in August 1989 in an entry-level HR job at a debt collection agency in Dublin. There were well over 200 employees, and most of them were in debt collecting positions. I was heavily involved in interviewing for new jobs and doing new hire orientations. I have to say, I hated it! Hated it because the turnover of staff was so incredibly high. People started as debt collection agents and very many of them resigned very quickly. Very few would stay in position beyond one year. Part of their pay was commission, so it wasn’t a very stable career for most people. I managed to stick it out for 16 months in the end, but I was looking for other positions long before.

In one sense, it was a blessing, as I had done a high volume of hiring, and that was exactly what the City of Dublin was looking for. I began working there in December 1991. They needed someone to recruit and hire for their summer seasonal positions, which ranged from life guards, to camp counsellors, to parks and street maintenance workers. The City appointed about 100 seasonal employees every summer. I found the role much more to my liking. It’s where I found my love of public service. My job allowed me to see how I was helping to make a positive difference in the lives of city residents, and making things better for them.

I was at the City of Dublin for 15 years. The city itself expanded greatly during that time, and my role expanded with it. I began to focus on hiring full-time employees, rather than just seasonal employees. I moved into hiring and recruitment of positions in departments such as the Police, Engineering, Finance and Income Tax, and Parks and Recreation. One of the highlights came in 1995, when the Dublin Community Recreation Center was under construction and we began hiring for around 15 full-time and 75 part-time all-new positions for the Center, which opened the following year.

My title changed to Human Resources Administrator and I had my own staff. One of the highlights was the way that everybody had a pitch-in attitude to the City’s special events. I had the privilege of working at various events, including Dublin’s huge July 4th event, which is a very big deal for the city. I got to meet many of the famous singers who would perform at the event, including Tom Jones, most famous for his hit song, “It’s Not Unusual.”

My most memorable time, however, came during a ride-along with a police officer during the City’s Memorial Golf Tournament. I was there with him to see, first-hand, an officer’s job responsibilities, ahead of re-writing job descriptions. We were responding to a call from someone who had locked themselves out of their vehicle, but on the way, we saw a car spliced across a retaining stone wall and teetering on the edge. The officer groaned and muttered an expletive, then said we had to respond to this.

The driver and passenger were both teenage girls. They were out of the teetering car, and they were both very drunk. This was my introduction to how the police handle these kind of situations. I was in plain clothes and carrying a clipboard, and somehow the driver got it into her head that I was a producer for the then very popular TV show, “Cops,” which filmed the police in real-life situations. She began crying and begged me not to put her on TV. And although I assured her I had nothing to do with the show, she persisted crying and then got abusive with me. She called me all manner of names that I’d never been called before and have never been called since.

The police officer did a check and discovered that this was the driver’s third under-age drink driving offence, and as such it required that she be arrested and taken to the Franklin County Jail. I went with them and saw the booking-in process. I found it instructive, and also frightening. We drove into an area that was then sealed by metal doors. This was where the driver had mug shots and finger prints taken. The male holding cells were in this area. The men were behind big glass windows, and it reminded me of the aquarium at the Columbus Zoo. But many of the men in those holding cells, seeing me there, began licking the glass and making lude movements. If I had ever needed it, this was the best “scared-straight” program going, as I resolved I would never want to even think about doing anything that would have me brought to such a place. I told the officer I didn’t like the thought of leaving this drunk teenage girl there, but he said there was a separate holding area for women and there was no alternative. This experience confirmed for me why I could never have worked for the police or in corrections. It took us between four and five hours to handle this one case.

In 2006 I took a break from public service. I had been volunteering at my church, teaching kids about the Christian faith, and I began working at this  church in Children’s Ministry for a time. My faith is a key part of my being and my desire to connect with people and helping them get to where they want to be, in life and in work. Working in children’s ministry was great fun and very rewarding, although not in a financial sense. In 2008 I began working for the Delaware Public Health District, in their HR department. I didn’t enjoy my work there very much. It was in September 2009 when fate took a hand for me. Back then, when we advertised job positions at the Health District, we placed ads in local newspapers, and then cut out the newspaper ad and attached it to an invoice, to pay for the ad. On this fateful September day, I was cutting out the ad for a health educator position, and immediately below my ad I saw an advertisement for the position of Human Resources Director at Metro Parks. I just went on cutting, and took the Metro Parks ad home with me and worked on my application that same night. It felt like the job was “calling out” to me.

I loved Metro Parks. I was practically raised in Sharon Woods and Blendon Woods Metro Parks. When I was little, my mum would put my bike on our car and drive us to Sharon Woods. At that time, the park had a bike rental shed, and mom would rent a bike for herself, and I would ride my own bike on the Multi-Use Trail. We did that frequently. I also used to hike and picnic at both parks with friends from high school. When I applied for the position at Metro Parks, I was living in Hilliard and had two dogs, which I brought to the park regularly to play at the doggie beach in Darby Bend Lakes. When I was selected for the position, as well as being utterly delighted, I remember thinking, “I’ll finish my career at Metro Parks.” And so it has proven, as I will be retiring at the end of January 2025. By then, I will have accumulated 31 years in public service.

What I do at Metro Parks and what I love most about it

The main function of my role is to serve as an HR Generalist, covering the life span of an employee from recruitment and hiring, to employee benefits, their training and development and compensation, and right through to the end of their employment. You touch every aspect of an employee’s work life. The highlight, truly, is working with a group of people who share the same passion for the parks. Seeing what people can achieve, when their job is a passion and not just a job, has been remarkable. We all make a sustainable difference to people’s lives and to the environment.

One of the great highlights of my time at Metro Parks has been my involvement with our annual Breakfast With Santa event for staff. My very first Breakfast With Santa occurred just two weeks after I started at Metro Parks, which was on November 23, 2009. We’ve held one every year since (except during covid), and I love that I get to see the non-work side of our employees. We had 150 RSVPs for this year’s event. I get to see our employees with their spouse and their kids, and sometimes even with their own parents. The daughter of one long-time employee, who is now aged 15 and has been coming to Breakfast With Santa for a good many years, chose to work the event as a Metro Parks volunteer this year. It feels like I’m seeing the next generation of public servants make their first big imprint on the world.

Another big highlight of my time here has been the development of our seasonal employment program. It coincided, to some extent, with OSU’s change from quarters to semesters. That change hugely impacted the ability of students to work part-time, or as an intern. We didn’t want to lose this feeder-type of employee, so we developed our seasonal program so students could work with us full-time over a summer, and with an invitation to come back and work for us every summer while they remained at college. It has worked great. The big majority of our seasonals are students, but we also have a good number of retirees who like to work for us in the summer months. Some of these retirees become ‘snow birds’ in winter, and migrate to holiday homes in warmer climates, before coming back to us the following summer. We started the program in 2012 and we now have more than 100 seasonal positions, including park technicians, rangers, camp counselors, and our Columbus City Schools interns.

My favorite Metro Parks activity

Anything that includes the pet trails or the pet beaches are a highlight for me and my family. It was great when Rocky Fork Metro Park opened our first and only off-leash trail for pets. We took our golden retriever, Finster, soon after it opened. It had rained heavily in the few days before we went and Finster took perverse delight in rolling in every mud puddle we came across! It didn’t deter us, though. We loved watching him run free and it still brings up lots of joyful memories. We named him after a Loony Tunes character named Baby Finster, who’s a gangster who looks like a baby, and is also known as Ant-Hill Harry. My husband Mark and I also take him regularly to the dog beach at Prairie Oaks, where he loves to splash in the lake, and we enjoy taking him on a 3-mile hike at Quarry Trails Metro Park. Back in 2012, when our son Andrew graduated from high school, we had his high school senior pictures taken at Prairie Oaks.

My favorite Metro Parks story that includes a positive visitor interaction

I was at Eagle View Lodge at Blacklick Woods Golf Course a couple of years ago, just finishing up a meeting there, when a member of the public came in and asked if she could peek in and look around, as she had reserved the lodge for her upcoming 70th birthday party. I invited her in and showed her around, and I talked to her about what kind of music she would have at her party, and who would be coming to it. It turned into a really wonderful conversation. I have so many marvelous interactions with our employees and volunteers, but rarely with park visitors. Listening to this lady, as she told me about her many years of coming to Blacklick Woods and how much it meant to her and her family, emphasized for me how important Blacklick Woods and all the other Metro Parks are to the people we serve. It was such a memorable conversation and I could happily have talked to her for hours.

Traveling – places I’ve been, places I’d love to go

Our favorite vacation ever was in 2019 when we went to the British Virgin Islands and explored them by catamaran. The catamaran was a four-bedroom vessel owned by friends of ours, who invited us on the vacation. Mark and I were one of four couples on the boat, which was powered by motor or by sail. The owners acted as captain and first mate and led us on this fabulous tour of the islands. The British Virgin Islands have four main islands and more than 50 smaller ones. We moored at the main islands of Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada and Jost Van Dyke and spent a day or two at each, sight-seeing and visiting shops and restaurants. We also stopped at many of the smaller islands, using a motorized dinghy which we tied up at the piers, like a horse.

The islands are in the Caribbean Sea, and the water was a beautiful aqua-blue and crystal clear, so you could easily see fish swimming by the boat. Being at sea so much, we were damp from humidity nearly all the time. There were four bedrooms and four bathrooms on board the catamaran, but water supply was limited onboard, so we chose to use public showers on the islands. The islands had been hit by Hurricane Irma a couple of years earlier, and we saw evidence of it in many places, including seeing boats that had been swept up onto hillsides. Some resorts had been totally demolished, and yet the island people had endured and recovered magnificently from the ordeal. The people were fantastic, and very friendly. We spent most of one day at Cow Wreck Beach on Anegada, which is one of the most beautiful beaches on Earth, with pure white sand lapped by the aqua-marine sea. The strange name dates from a shipwreck back in the 1800s, when a ship full of cow bones sank and deposited its entire cargo in the sea. Back then, cow bones were used to make buttons, or were ground-up to make bone meal and used as fertilizer.

We had another great vacation in 2016, when we went to Hawaii. We wanted to see Pearl Harbor and so went there first, on the island of Oahu. It was very busy and touristy, and not quite what we’d expected. But all that was corrected when we went to the island of Maui, for a real Hawaii experience. We were there in March, and got to experience the tail-end of whale season. We saw lots of whales breaching themselves out at sea, and went snorkeling to see other marine life up close. One of the most exciting experiences was when we took a van ride to the top of the Haleakala volcano, and watched the sunrise from the top. Then we rode gearless bikes down the side of the mountain to complete the experience. It was breathtaking.

Mark worked for a company that had an office in Charlotte, North Carolina, so we became familiar with the area. We had been looking to buy a vacation home, thinking of somewhere close to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. But we talked about hurricanes and floods, and the costs associated with hurricane insurance, and arrived at the thought that perhaps a lakeside home would be better for us than an ocean home. So we bought a condo on Lake Norman, which is a huge lake encompassing many cities and counties in North Carolina. Our condo is on the north side of the lake, at Mooresville. We bought it in 2021 for vacations, and for when Mark needed to go to the North Carolina office for work. But then Mark was laid off from his company in December 2023. We decided to keep the condo as our vacation home. Recently, Mark was offered a new position in Charlotte, North Carolina, working for Wells Fargo. Our condo at Mooresville is only about 15 miles north of Charlotte, so it is going to become our permanent home. I’ll be retiring at the end of January 2025, when Mark starts his new job.

We are on the third-floor of our building and the view of the lake is stunning. The climate down there is more moderate in winter, with temperatures an average of 15 degrees higher than here in central Ohio. The summers can get very hot, but living on a lake helps to cope with the heat. For now, we intend to keep our house here in Columbus, so we’ll be reversing around our living and vacationing homes. I have my eyes on some volunteer opportunities when we relocate to North Carolina. Ever since we bought our condo, we’ve been members of the Carolina Raptor Center, which is a little like the Ohio Wildlife Center, but with the focus on raptors. I hope to volunteer there, and also at the nature center at Lake Norman State Park, which is very close to our new home.

Sometime in the future, probably not until Mark retires too, we’d love to go on a European River Cruise, especially to see Germany and Austria.

Fun facts about me and my family

1. Stats don’t lie! I met my husband Mark in a class at OSU, Statistics 131, in which I did not do well – although I did gain a husband eventually. It was a 12-week class, divided into lectures, on some days, and recitation classes on other days. I was the only female in a class of about 25, and I used to ask myself, why am I such a nerd magnet. But then Mark sat next to me one day, and I learned that he lived in the fraternity house right next to my sorority house. Several weeks after the semester ended, Mark called me, under the guise of asking what grade I got in the statistics class. A friend of Mark’s picked up a phone extension in another room and said, “He’s really wanting to ask you out. So maybe if you can find a friend of yours for me, we can all go on a double date.” That was in June 1986 and was the start of our relationship. Mark and I got married in September 1989. Ironically, that friend of Mark’s now lives in the Charlotte area, so we are about to become near neighbors again. He and Mark had been in kindergarten together.

2. Nasher is my boy! Our son Andrew is 30 and he’s a famous YouTube Influencer in the hockey world. He took the name “Nasher” to honor Rick Nash, one of the Columbus Blue Jackets’ greatest-ever players. Andrew has 936,000 followers on YouTube and his favorite saying, lately, is “On the Road to a Million!”

On Memorial Day weekend this year, Andrew opened a roller hockey arena in Plain City, which he calls “Heat Wave Arena.” His vision is to bring an affordable version of roller hockey to central Ohio. So far, the arena is proving to be a huge success. The arena is used by roller hockey clubs from all around central Ohio. Andrew also organizes tournaments at the arena, with teams from as far afield as Michigan, New York, Minnesota and Indiana joining Ohio teams to compete. He also offers the arena for use by local leagues for youth through adult ages. Such has been his impact in the hockey world, Andrew became the first non-NHL player to receive a sponsorship from Bauer Hockey, one of ice hockey’s major equipment suppliers. He is also a content creator for EA Sports, and is honored by being one of the players available for selection in the EA Sports range of video games. He played high-school hockey and still enjoys playing recreationally.

Andrew also helps the Blue Jackets with occasional promotional activities. He has done some great interviews with Rick Nash and other players on his YouTube channel. Even Rick Nash’s own kids now call Andrew “the real Nasher!”

3. Something Fishy! We are definite pet lovers, and have had pets ranging from dogs to cats to mice and fish. The mice came to us when Andrew was in elementary school. His teacher had used some classroom mice and was later looking for homes for them. Being the sucker that I am, we agreed to take in two mice. However, not wanting to start an entire mice colony, and not knowing how to sex these animals, I simply examined some of the mice by their ‘under parts’ shall we say, and selected two that looked the same to me in that area. Then hoped for the best! I never knew what sex they were, but they didn’t have babies, and that was the point. They were with us for several years.

Our best pet story dates from when Andrew was in first grade. He won a goldfish while playing a game at the Circleville Pumpkin Show. That fish lived for 20 years! He was definitely low maintenance and we called him “Fishy.” Although we added other fish to our aquarium over the years, Fishy outlived all of them!

My favorite food and dessert

My favorite food, hands down, is steak and baked potato. I like my steak done medium and my baked potato slathered in sour cream. Longhorn Steak House is my favorite place to go eat a steak. We have an outdoor grill at home. Mark does most of the cooking, and does a good steak. He says he’s expecting me to take over the cooking duties after I retire and he starts his new job, so we’ll see! For dessert, my favorite is cherry cordial ice cream from United Dairy Farmers. It’s vanilla ice cream with big slices of cherry and big chunks of chocolate. I enjoy eating out too. One of my favorite places to eat out is Bob Evans. I like that you can get breakfast any time of day, and that every Bob Evans Restaurant has the same “homey” feel about it.

My favorite entertainment

I have quite a few favorites, including watching reality TV programs, reading, and I have a strong affection for the opera and for ballroom dancing, in fact anything dance related. Back in 2018, a friend invited me to a ballroom dance party. I wasn’t sure about it, and finally went on a whim, and fell in love with it. Back in high school, I’d been on the dance team, and I continued that at OSU, joining The Scarlet Steppers! This was more of a drill-team dance style, with choreographed, synchronized and kickline dances, something like the Radio City Rockettes. We danced to contemporary, upbeat music, in fact anything with a rhythmic dance beat. Ballroom dancing was different. I had a really good time at that first dance party and decided I would take group lessons. We’d meet once a week to learn steps for dances such as the waltz, tango and cha-cha. Later on I took private lessons, concentrating on rhythm dance series, which includes cha-cha, rhumba, bolero, mambo and swing. In 2020 I started to prepare for doing competitions. Covid got in the way, of course, in those early days, but I went on to compete at dance events in Columbus, Cincinnati, and as far afield as San Diego, California. Competitions were based on dance skill level and age groups, and I won competitions for bolero and cha-cha, dancing with my instructor.

I’ve also surprised myself by developing a love of opera. A friend introduced me to live cinema broadcasts of the New York Metropolitan Opera. Live performances are broadcast to cinemas across the country, including a number of theaters here in Columbus. I’ve always loved music and theater, but didn’t initially think I would take to opera. But I’ve come to love it. I’ve been to operas sung in Italian, French, German, and Russian. The words being sung are translated to English and shown on screen, so you always know what’s going on. The music is sublime, and the acting is terrific. Among my favorites were Madama Butterfly, by Puccini, and La Traviata, by Verdi. I’ve even got to the point where I follow the social media of one of the singers who made a big impression on me. Nadine Sierra is an American singer, from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She sang Violetta in La Traviata, an Italian opera, and also sang the role of Juliette, in Charles Gounod’s French opera, Romeo et Juliette.

Renee Telfer was talking to Communications Coordinator, Virginia Gordon

What Executive Director Tim Moloney says about Renee

“You would be hard pressed to find a more dedicated and compassionate HR professional than Renee. I am always amazed at her ability to put the needs of staff on equal footing as the needs of the District. She is a true talent that will be missed greatly as she heads to her new adventures.”