When Glenn Hyatt spoke, people listened. Friend Robin Blacken said he was a cowboy and a respected gentleman.
“My kids would tell you this,” Blacken said. “I would tell them ‘This is what Glenn says,’ and that’s the way it was.”
A star athlete at Darrington High School in the late 1940s, he was drafted by the New York Giants the night he graduated from high school. He played professional baseball until he went into the service during the Korean War. Friend Robert Spalding remembered challenging days for baseball players in Darrington, when spring training couldn’t begin until snow was scraped off the field.
A talented artist, Hyatt did illustrations for the student newspaper at Darrington High School. Scrapbooks at his ranch, lovingly compiled by his proud mother, include newspaper articles detailing her son’s exploits on the pitcher’s mound and around the diamond.
“He could hit the ball,” his brother, Maurice Hyatt, said. “You didn’t see guys who could hit and pitch at the same time.”
His brother said Hyatt was a man of many skills. He had the soft voice and touch that broke many a horse. He trained steeds for show and pleasure. A bird hunter, he also trained English pointers.
As he lay dying at his Lake Stevens ranch, his hunting dog, Mandy, cuddled at his chest. Hyatt died at home Sept. 28 of lung disease, though he never smoked. Visitors could tell he was sick when he quit pressing his jeans and shirts.
He live in a home accented with Western collectibles: a gun and holster; tractor-seat-on-milk-can bar stools, which he made himself; and beams with brands on them. Bob O’Connor, Hyatt’s friend of more than half a century, helped care for him at the ranch. They enjoyed trips to Montana, Reno and California through the years.
“We hunted and fished,” O’Connor said. “And flirted with women.”
Hyatt was divorced. O’Connor said he argued a lot with the 6-foot-tall cowboy but that neither of them ever won a verbal jousting.
Hyatt, 78, was born in Franklin, N.C., to Early and Bonnie Hyatt. According to friend Jeanette Cannon, Hyatt’s mother, Bonnie, said when her son was born, he weighed more than 13 pounds.
His mother would say “I didn’t have no baby. I had a youngen’.”
The family moved to Darrington in 1937.
Glenn Hyatt is survived by his younger brother, Maurice, and his wife, Virginia Hyatt; nephews Timothy and Gary Hyatt; friends Bob O’Connor, Robin Blacken, Craig Ohm, Ira and Michelle Vincent, Dave Larsen, Joe Brinster, and Robin Sweeny; cousin Eddie Hyatt; and the gun-club gang.
His mother worked for the post office after her husband died. When she retired, Hyatt moved her into a mobile home on his property in Lake Stevens.
“Glenn would hunt pheasant and bring them home to Bonnie,” Cannon said. “She would fix the best pheasant in gravy with biscuits. I always admired Glenn’s devotion to his mom and how he always made sure she had everything she needed.”
Hyatt was well-known for apple pies he baked and shared. Friends raved about his beans and corn bread.
He retired from the Snohomish County PUD after 30 years. He was a well-respected and highly competitive trap shooter who won many competitions. When he rode a horse, it was full speed, friends said.
When Hyatt broke his pelvis in the early 1990s after a fall from a rambunctious horse, he helped his doctor construct a secure brace to hold his pelvic bones together.
His artistic abilities are prominent in Eastern Washington, where his handcrafted signs hang at entrances to farms and ranches. He took the time to get to know clients and craft a perfect symbol for their property.
Robin Blacken said she could describe her friend in a handful of words, including hardworking, proud, independent and a man of integrity.
And for all his talent and empathy, the well-known athlete’s head never got too big for his signature white Stetson.
Herald writer Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451 or oharran@heraldnet.com.
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