Suzanne Hoyt

Background

Hoyt was born in South Orange, New Jersey on August 13, 1934.

Education

She graduated from the Beard School in Orange, New Jersey (now Morristown-Beard School) in 1952. Hoyt then attended Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts and Finch College in Manhattan.

Career

In 1950, she captured three blue ribbons and the hunter seat championship at the Rock Spring Horse Show. That September, she also earned an award for horsemanship at an event run by the New Jersey chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Hoyt served as class president during all four years of high school.

Hoyt gave money to fund the Christian Brothers Scholarship Fund at the College of Santa Fe (now the Santa Fe University of Art and Design), the Simmons Scholarship Fund at Santa Fe Community College and the Golden Apple Scholarship Fund.

Recognizing the impact of this philanthropy, Hoyt received election to the Board of Trustees of the College of Santa Fe. In 1988, the College of Santa Fe awarded Hoyt an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.

Hoyt donated to the Property Tax Assistance Fund at the Santa Fe Community Foundation. Providing affordable housing for families in need, she also donated land for 50 sites known as Old Las Vegas Place.

(The ranch goes by the name Sante Fe Ranch today) They subdivided the front areas of the ranch during the 1970s to create a subdivision known as Louisiana Tierra.

Louisiana Tierra represented an example of one of the first environmentally sensitive developments in New Mexico. Hoyt married Bob Weil on June 9, 1955. They had four children: Kate, Linda, Rob, and Elizabeth.

Achievements

• In 1991, The Santa Fe New Mexican, a newspaper, named Hoyt as "One of Ten Who Make Santa Fe a Better Place". The National Society of Fund Raising Executives awarded her their Outstanding Philanthropist of the Year Award in 1998. In 1995, New Mexico State University awarded her an honorary doctorate in law.

Connections

teacher:

Acequia Madre