Lew Hoyt’s career has included being a flight instructor at the Navy Fighter Weapons School, an alternate member of the U.S. Olympic teams in 1964 and 1968 and participating in the 1963 Collegiate Championships in the high jump.
However, Hoyt said he is most proud of his Christianity, with a distant second being named a Golden Eagle by the Early and Pioneer Naval Aviators Association during its April meeting in Jacksonville, Fla. There are 194 current members of the group.
“It was the highest honor given to a naval aviator, to be nominated for the Golden Eagles,” Hoyt said. ”And half of the [recipients] are admirals, generals, astronauts … It was so neat and so humbling, and[I was] so honored to be with all these guys. They say that everybody who is a Golden Eagle, that the first thing they say is ‘I am not worthy’ … It was special and I was able to take my wife [Nancy Hoyt] with me.”
“My wife Nancy and I have established two endowment funds for the teachers and students at [Sedona Red Rock High School],” Hoyt wrote in his Golden Eagle biography. “Also created the ‘Empowering Kids’ fund with the Arizona Community Foundation, through which we have donated for the past 10 years approximately 40 different $1,000 scholarships to high school graduates to use in their future educational expenses.”
David Jolkovski/Larson Newspapers
Photo courtesy of Lew Hoyt
After local nonprofit Manzanita Outreach shuttered its School Supplies for Teachers program in 2023 to focus on food distribution, Lew and Nancy Hoyt and ACF stepped in at West Sedona School to provide every teacher with a $50 gift card for school supplies to fill the gap until SedonaKind received a $15,000 donation from the 100+ Women Who Care Sedona-Verde Valley Chapter to continue the program.
“We had expressed to Manzanita Outreach many times what a great gift that was [for] teachers to be able to gather the supplies that they needed when they needed it, and it didn’t come out of pocket,” WSS Principal Elizabeth Tavasci said.
“The supply closets at the schools were empty,” SedonaKind member Jawn McKinley said. “I mean, there was nothing, so they were really at the bottom of the barrel.”
“The Empowering Kids’ Fund at ACF and 100 Women Who Care will have ripples far beyond the supplies they make possible for the school, the teachers and the children,” SedonaKind wrote in its April newsletter. “Our community has stepped up and shown that we value education and know what it takes for our students to have all the tools they need to learn. This is a powerful message of kindness, and SedonaKind is honored to be a part of it. We are so grateful to the Hoyts and Empowering Kids’ Fund and all 100 Women Who Care for making this possible.”
Hoyt credited his inspiration for starting the fund to a friend that he met at a Sedona golf course around the year 2000, Wyoming investment manager and former Republican candidate for governor of Wyoming Foster Friess, who died in 2021 at the age of 81. Hoyt recalled that he told Friess at their first meeting that he used to work on a ranch in Wyoming before “it was discovered by the millionaires and the billionaires.”
David Jolkovski/Larson Newspapers
“He said ‘Oh, really?’ and so from that we became friends,” Hoyt said. “Friess was the most humble person; he was a multi-multi-billionaire. He gave money everywhere and Foster, he loved America, he loved the Lord Jesus Christ, he loved students and so he wanted to help people.”
“[Friess] gave me money which I put into Empowering Kids,” Hoyt said. “So [Friess] gave me $100,000 and I put that with one of the endowments there with Jennifer Perry as [well as] money from this other anonymous donor … I have enough money to do this fellowship for two more years. And then after that I’ll be kind of [out of] money and out of funds and out of energy, but I want it to live on.”
“‘You Don’t Have to be Average’ was one of our endowments and we kind of combined it into the Empowering Kids’ Fund,” Hoyt said. “In that fund I have a not ton of money, but a good amount of money that has been contributed to me by different people, and because Nancy and I have no kids, we have established these funds with our own assets. So that we can do good things when we end up leaving this earth for others. Those funds will live on.”
