Jerald Bruce Pardue

Jerald Bruce Pardue has gone to meet his Lord and Savior. He passed away in the presence of family on February 18th, 2026 at home in Artesia.

Jerry was born October 1st, 1944 in Plainview, Texas to Bruce and Hazel Pardue. When his father returned from WWII, the family moved back to Eddy County. Jerry spent his childhood in Loving and Carlsbad. Those who knew Jerry will attest that his chief virtue was the love of hard work. At 16 he got his first job: chopping cotton for a farmer renting land from his grandfather. He would work 10 hours per day for five and a half days a week. Jerry said that in comparison to chopping cotton, no job felt like a "real job."

The young Jerry was a mischievous child and his devout Nazarene parents hoped that a church camp near Ruidoso would be a good influence on the boy. It turned out that church camp gave him even more opportunities for hijinks, rather than a break from them. There was the time that he "borrowed" a church bus and took it for a joyride. He also made a friend at church camp who got him into bareback bronco riding. Jerry forged his parents signature and hitchhiked to Tatum to ride in his first rodeo. He was swiftly bucked off, but that didn't matter to Jerry. He was hooked. He rode a Brahma bull in his second event. After high school, Jerry started bull riding all around the country, going from town to town with other cowboys who were trying to win enough prize money to buy gas to drive to the next rodeo. One night he witnessed a grisly bull-riding accident that led him to close the rodeo chapter of his story.

Jerry worked all kinds of jobs in all kinds of places, but two common threads tie the list together: cowboying and trucking. He cowboyed on ranches in Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, and California. From 1980 to 2006 Jerry ran the Hashknife Ranch (formerly Currycomb) southeast of Artesia, where he ran 400 head of Beefmaster cattle and was awarded the Excellence in Grazing Award from the Society for Range Management in 1993. He was a member of the National Reined Cow Horse Association and the National Cutting Horse Association. From the West Coast to the East Coast, Jerry drove big rigs, tractors, heavy dump trucks, and his own F-350 for farms, ranches, feed lots, road construction crews, ore mines, and more. But, reflecting back, his favorite job of all was cowboying at the million-acre Winecup Ranch in northern Nevada.

It was while working at another Nevada ranch, Van Norman's, that Jerry met a geologist from Texas named Debby Dodge. They were married in November of 1978 and spent their first years of married life in the wide expanse of northern Nevada ranchland.

In 1980 Jerry returned with Debby to New Mexico to take the reins of more than forty thousand acres of ranchland for Pardue Farms. While ranching in NM, Jerry became a father and he and Debby raised their two boys on the ranch, teaching them to ride horses, mend fences, drive trucks and tractors before they were teenagers (including how to drive a truck with a trailer in reverse) and of course, how to care for cattle.

Jerry became "Granddaddy" in 2013 and again in 2017. He loved getting down on the floor to play with his granddaughters and was exceedingly proud of their accomplishments, big and ordinary alike.

In 2023 Jerry had a terrifying heart-attack like incident that made a profound spiritual impact on him. Jerry gave his life to Christ and shortly thereafter became a member of Roswell Baptist Church, where he worshiped faithfully, a church that played a big part in what he enjoyed most about recent years.

Jerry was a man of many interests, including photography, reading, road-cycling (Yes, there really was a Jerry-in-spandex phase!), model airplane building, video editing, WWII history, NASCAR, Elvis, and more. He was always busy with something, and his interests could be all-consuming. But his abiding passion was working with horses. That's where Jerry was happiest. He loved working with horses throughout his ranching days, and preparing for Cutting Horse competitions, and with "Fuzzy" the pony he gifted to his granddaughters. When he was no longer able to ride or work with horses, off-roading became his passion. He relished being the "old guy" that young off-roaders would underestimate, then surprising them with his daring and skill. Taking his Bronco on off-road adventures both locally and across the Western U.S. brought him a lot of enjoyment and camaraderie in the past several years.

Jerry is survived by his wife Debby; sons Charlie and Will; granddaughters Zoe and Iris; siblings Kathy Van Soest, Larry Pardue, and Suzanne Boerio. He is predeceased by his parents, Bruce and Hazel and his youngest sister, Patricia Ours.

Jerry did enough living to fill several books with stories and he will be missed dearly. Vaya con Dios. Until we meet again.

A Memorial Service for Jerry will be held at First Methodist Church in Artesia, NM at 10:30am on Friday, February 27th.