HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Cecil O’Brate was born in Enid, Okla., in November of 1928. Just in time for the Great Depression.

O’Brate grew up in parallel with the worldwide economic crisis that hit the United States with a devastating blow. He grew up in poverty, although none of it dimmed an internal passion burning inside him to change both his fortune and his future.

By the age of 10, nearing the end of the depression, he was working jobs. By 16, he’d already built a résumé of sorts, delivering newspapers, stocking groceries, working as a butcher, bread slicer, salesman, gas station attendant, used-car salesman, glasses maker and more.

Early on, O’Brate showed entrepreneurial skills, too, as he creatively found additional avenues for earning money to help provide for his family.

“Every dime helped. We counted dimes then, not dollars,” he said in the book Making It Happen: Be Smart, Work Hard , and Never Worry About Having ‘Enough’ – Lessons from Cecil O’Brate.

Life changed abruptly for O’Brate as he moved into his late teens. Prior to his senior year in high school, he moved with his grandparents to a custom farm in Syracuse — not New York, but Kansas.

“It’s 50 miles from Colorado and 50 miles from Oklahoma,” he said. “You can’t quite see the end of the world from there, but just about.”

It was there that O’Brate discovered a love for farming, and the love of his life: the former Frances Cole. And the latter was a love to last, as the couple celebrated their 71st wedding anniversary in September.

O’Brate spent that year farming and working to save money for college. And for O’Brate, college meant only one destination: Oklahoma State, or Oklahoma A&M at the time.

He started in the fall of 1946, choosing a major strategically, utilizing the library to research the highest-paying jobs, leading him to architectural engineering, although that would eventually change to structural engineering. O’Brate lived in Cordell Hall and worked two jobs to help pay the bills: packaging ice cream at a local plant and setting pins at the bowling alley.

The ice cream job came with perks.

“I was catching it and putting it in the containers,” O’Brate said. “It comes out about like a malt. They said, ‘Feel free to test some ice cream.’

“I did.”

Once, O’Brate said with a laugh, he overdid things with the ice cream.

“I couldn’t quite afford to eat when I was in Stillwater, and I took a little too much,” he said. “My next job at the bowling alley, I worked in the back where it was hotter than hell. I got so sick I couldn’t even get home. My two roommates had to come get me. So I learned those two don’t mix.”

It’s rare, however, that work and O’Brate don’t mix.

After two years at OSU, in the fall of 1948, serious work came calling. His grandfather leased an additional 3,000 acres of land in Kansas and needed help. O’Brate answered the call, setting aside school and heading off to farm with the family.

The move changed everything, with a successful run of the land thrusting O’Brate forward into business — for good.

“That gave me a pretty good boost,” he said.

O’Brate never returned to school, although OSU awarded him with an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters last May. Instead, he thrived as a farmer, rancher, banker, business manager, developer and serial entrepreneur. He bought and sold property and banks and ventured into manufacturing and the oil and gas business, thriving as always.

Today, O’Brate is President/CEO of several independent oil and gas companies, including American Warrior, Inc., and Palmer Oil. And he’s greatly contributed to reviving Garden City, investing more than $55 million into the community to spark growth and to entice others to invest as well, fueling a rise of new shopping centers, restaurants and business development.

“He’s a living, breathing, testimony that the American Dream is still alive,” Holder said. “You can have nothing but ambition coupled with work ethic and commitment, and you can do anything.

“That’s not unique to the United States of America, but I think it’s more credible here. And I definitely think it’s more prevalent in this part of the United States, here in middle America where there’s good, old Christian values, hard work, loyalty, all the things I think make the country great.

“Cecil is a great example to all the young people who will come through the door (of the stadium) for decades to come. It doesn’t matter who you are, what your lineage is, what your circumstances are today, you can climb the highest mountain.”