JOYCE Pattie, founder chairman of Newport Ladies’ Circle and former president of the IW Riding and Driving for the Disabled, has died, aged 88.
From an early age, Joyce (nee Biles) shared her father’s love of horses.
On leaving school, Joyce and her friend, Maureen Walmsley, spent time in Egham under the tutelage of a cavalry riding master, renowned for his pioneering methods with horses, influencing behaviour without the use of a whip.
The lessons she learned were invaluable to her immediate future as a riding instructor and, more generally, to a life of gentleness towards people, animals and very often a combination of the two.
Joyce and Maureen ran a riding school until the end of 1949, when the girls both fell in love and married army officers, Gordon Pattie and Tom Cox, within months of each other, and gave up their careers to support those of their husbands.
Gordon and Joyce lived most of their married life at Mackett’s Farm, Arreton, where their children, Iain and Anna were born.
Joyce was keen the children learn to ride and join the Pony Club.
Joyce helped out and offered her services when asked to help start the IW branch of Riding for the Disabled.
Joyce and others worked successfully to build the organisation and, over the years, attracted sufficient funds for the driving to become an entity in its own right.
Gordon and Joyce had a wide circle of friends.
Gordon joined Newport Round Table as a founder member and, a few years later, Joyce was elected founder chairman of the Ladies’ Circle. They moved on to Rotary and Tangent, and Joyce carried on attending for as long as she was able.
Through his work, Gordon became involved at a national level in the fruit industry, with Joyce supporting him, as president’s lady in 1991, when he was elected national president of the Wholesale Fruit Trade Association.

She leaves her daughter, Anna Vinson, three grandsons and three great-grandsons.
Her funeral will take place next Friday, October 27, at 1pm, at St John’s Church, Newport, followed by burial at Springwood Cemetery.