Sid Goodloe September 27, 1930 – July 24, 2023
Sid was born September 27, 1930, in Abilene, Texas and passed peacefully July 24, 2023, in Mescalero, NM at the age of 92. He leaves behind his wife, Cheryl, his four children Floyd Goodloe, Cindy (Wes) Smith, Sherry (Walt) Evans and Sidney R. Goodloe as well as five stepchildren Stacy Wozny, Michelle (Rob) Beard, Lara Bailiff, Becca (James) Wozny, and David (Nancy) Wozny. He is also survived by Shirley A. Goodloe. Sid had 22 Grandchildren and 13 Great Grandchildren. Sid was preceded in death by his son Jim.
Sid went with his Dad to several ranches as a young boy and remembered fishing in the dirt tanks for blue gill perch. He remembered playing mumbly peg(marbles and a pocket knife) in grade school at Alto Vista. He graduated from Abilene High School in 1947. Sid was the starting pitcher for the baseball team, winning 16 games in his senior year.
He was offered several baseball scholarships, but because his father died during his Senior year, Sid accepted a scholarship to McMurry College, south of Abilene so he could be near his mother. He was determined to go to A&M and entered the University in 1949. He was a ‘walk-on’ for the Freshman Baseball Team and the following three years, played on the Varsity. He graduated with a degree in Animal Science in 1952.
He not only played baseball at A&M but also for the Abilene Town Team and a short period for the Kochernaut team at Alpine, TX. His Baseball career at A&M was a bit tricky because he rodeoed most weekends and the Coach didn’t like that. However, in 1951 A&M won the Southwest Conference and went to the College World Series in Omaha.
Sid met Shirley Scott, in Texas around 1950 at a rodeo. They were married in1952, the same day he graduated from A&M and received his commission in the U. S. Army.
During the summers, while attending A&M, he worked on ranches around Albany and Abilene. Being the youngest cowboy on most of these ranches, he was cut the bucking stock out of the remuda, but that was the easy part compared to building fence in the rocks. After graduating he was assigned to Ft. Benning, GA as a Second Lt. in the Infantry. Rodeoing in Florida, he damaged his knee bad enough that General Mark Clark sent him to Infirmary, probably saving his life, as prior to that he was designated to go to Korea, where platoon leaders were the highest casualty group in the Infantry.
He returned to NM and went to work on the Randy Franks Ranch southwest of Silver City. His next job was managing the Summers Ranch east of Springerville, AZ. After a year there, a rancher friend of his from Abilene asked him to go to Hillside, CO to run a ranch there. Later he was able to secure a loan and make a down payment on the Carrizo Valley Ranch (1956) which he has owned until the present. With the help of the SCS (now the NRCS) he began a conservation program that was noted by other ranchers and conservation-minded public as a bellwether land improvement project.
In 1966, Sid began managing the NMSU Ft. Stanton Ranch. While there he was offered a job by the Near East Foundation to go to Kenya and improve cattle and range management methods in the Riff Valley Province. Shirley and the five kids accompanied him. He worked there as an advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture and while in Kenya, flew to Rhodesia and met Allan Savory. He realized that Allan had come up with a very interesting grazing method. Sid brought that practice back to the States when his time in Kenya was over (1969). His write-up of ‘Short Duration Grazing’ was published that year in Rangelands Magazine. The article resulted in widespread interest in a rotational grazing method (now Holistic Planned Grazing) that is currently prevalent globally.
Robert O. Anderson employed Sid as Diamond A’s International Ranch Manager, starting in Madagascar and including Brazil, Australia, Ireland, England, Dominican Republic, and Iran (which involved Sid sending 2 plane loads of Zebu type cattle to Anderson’s project in Iran and five Arabian horses to the Shah of Iran). Later he managed Anderson’s Horse Ranch at Riverside, NM, as well as his ranch on the New Fork River near Dora Wyoming. Sid Also took the two brothers who built Aswan Dam to Jim Eller’s Ranch in Tx, where they purchased embryos for President Anwar Sadat in Egypt.
After his return from Kenya, some long-time Kenya ranchers asked Sid to put together a herd of Santa Gertrudis cattle and fly them to Kenya, which turned out to be rather exciting. The first flight attempt came with an engine fire on takeoff and then bulls on the runway at the Nairobi International Airport.
In the interim, Sid developed a composite breed called Alpine Black, (Brown Swiss + Angus). In the following years, he continued his conservation work, including the use of fire erosion control and vegetation management. He made presentations throughout the southwest on these somewhat out-of-the-box management methods.
He was Divorced in 1985 and married Cheryl Wozny in 2000. Together
they have developed range and livestock improvement that is well-known in the Southwest, as well as a hunting operation on Carrizo Valley Ranch that is quite successful. In December of 2022, Sid received the New Mexico Leopold Conservation Award.
Sid was a great husband, father, step-father and friend to many. He loved the land and its inhabitants. He will be greatly missed.
The Celebration of Life honoring Sid will be held at 2:00 PM on August 19, 2023 at the Angus Church of the Nazarene, Alto, NM. The service will be live-streamed on their YouTube channel.
AWARDS LIST: Resource Advisory Council; Environmental Stewardship NCBA & photo; NM Outstanding Environment Stewardship; Corps of Cadets A & M; Man of the Year 93-94; Sid photo; NMCGA Salt of the Earth; Festival of the West; Award of Merit; Watershed Management ’99; NM Range Management ’76; TAMU Century Club; NMCGA From the Ground Up; Burch Award.