Longtime legislator dies at 91

CLOVIS - Hoyt Pattison was a longtime state legislator, a longtime lobbyist after that and a farmer throughout. But at his heart he was an innovative problem solver.

Pattison, who died Wednesday at 91, was a lifelong resident of Clovis, with notable exceptions for his college time at New Mexico State University, his service in the U.S. Air Force and his annual treks to Santa Fe for 11 terms as representative for District 63.

First elected in 1962, Pattison served from 1963 to 1984, and was minority whip from 1965 to 1966 and minority floor leader from 1975 to 1984.

"Anybody that knew Hoyt knew that he was a very stout conservative gentlemen, but he was able to put together and help me in the coalition that brought people together," Rep. Pat Woods, R-Broadview, told the Taos News. "He was an especially good friend of mine. He encouraged me to run for this office."

Brian Moore, who served eight years in the Legislature, said Pattison was the go-to guy on anything related to agriculture and always knew where issues intersected with the people.

"He was really trustworthy," said Moore, who added that Pattison helped him understand various committees better. "He understood the politics of something, but he wasn't partisan. That was never his focus."

Daughter Melinda Joy Pattison said her father grew up on the family farm, where his father homesteaded and completed associated obligations through military service in World War I.

"He was raised in the Depression," Melinda Joy said. "He grew up working hard from a very early age. That's what he expected of everybody around him."

She said her father had a patriarchal view of the world, where girls did certain things and boys did certain things, but that, "he was also a man of contradictions; he still said to us we could be anything we wanted to be."

The family raised sheep when most others raised cattle, and he was an experimental farmer who planted various crops but usually stayed with milo, wheat and sugar beets as money crops.

"He was a rare ag man," said former Clovis Media Inc. Publisher Ray Sullivan, "who switched from dryland to irrigation and back to dryland. I admired him greatly."

Hoyt didn't have much in the way of spare time, but he had plenty of interests that included wind energy and ethanol production. He even received a patent for the Clean Funnel, which took a basic funnel and added caps on each end to reduce messes.

The Pattison farm was full of projects, some completed and some left for later. One project included gutting a combine and installing sprayers.

"It's not so much he was good at it as much as he was unwilling to accept the conventional solution," said son Will Pattison. "If he didn't have money to solve it the way everybody else did, he was going to make his own. That was part of growing up in the Depression."

Will said his father always taught his kids about the importance of tenacity and not accepting things at face value and that he "hated the bureaucracy in all respects" throughout his life.

"He had a pretty rough beginning to life," Will said. "His mother left the family when he was 5. Growing up in those times and in those circumstances definitely shaped his approach to life."

Hoyt Pattison served on more than a dozen standing committees throughout his 22 years of lawmaking, with his longest stretches being 12 years on the agriculture committee and five years in appropriations and finance.