Obituary

Loy Lane Wylie

PETERSBURG-- Graveside services for Loy Lane Wylie, 74, of Lubbock, will be held at 10:30 a.m. Monday in the Petersburg Cemetery by Rix Funeral Directors.

A memorial service will be at 2 p.m. Monday at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Lubbock.

Mr. Wylie died Thursday, March 18, 2004, at his residence following a lengthy illness.

He was born June 5, 1929, in Petersburg and graduated from Petersburg High School in 1946. He graduated from Texas Tech in 1950 where he majored in business administration and was a member of the College Club, which later became Kappa Sigma Fraternity.

During summer 1950, at the beginning of the Korean War, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. He completed Officers Candidate School and served as a finance officer until 1953 when he was discharged as a first lieutenant.

He married Glenna Shinn on Sept. 11, 1954, in Lubbock. After working briefly at his father's butane business in Petersburg, he and his wife moved to Fort Worth where he worked as a sales representative for Warren Petroleum. After his father's death in 1961, Mr. Wylie returned to Petersburg and managed the family business, Wylie and Son, Inc.

In 1963, Mr. Wylie designed and manufactured the Flame Trac self-propelled flame cultivator. His manufactuing and innovative interested expanded and manufactured the Flame Trac self-propelled flame cultivator. His manufacturing and innovative interested expanded to include the production of the first Treflan weed sprayer in 1965, a sunflower harvester in 1975, a recirculating cotton sprayer in 1976, a self-propelled spot sprayer in 1979, and a self-leveling spray boom in 1989.

During the past 40 years Wylie and Son. Inc., of Petersburg has grown to employ 150 people with seven retail outlets in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.

Mr. Wylie retired from the daily operations of the firm in 1989 when his son, Scot Wylie, became president. However, in 1994 he helped the firm install rotational molding equipment to build polyethylene tanks.

He also worked toward restoring ranchalnd near Dickens. In recent years he began growing native Texas grasses and plants.

Survivors include his wife; a son and daughter-in-law. Scott and Caroline Wylie of Lubbock; a daughter, Paula, of Annapolis, Md.; a sister, Lonelle Davis of Petersburg; and four granddaughters, Mary Caroline and Virginia Wylie of Lubbock and Brooke and Callan Bower of Annapolis, Md.

The family suggests memorials to the Stubblefield, Probasco, Wylie Scholarship of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Texas Tech University, Box 42123, Lubbock 79409-2123, or the Loy L. Wylie Scholarship, Texas Tech School of Business, P.O. Box 42101, Lubbock TX 79409.

Plainview Daily Herald, March 21, 2004