Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life and legacy of Cecil O'Brate, who passed away on January 20 at the age of 95. Cecil was born in 1928 at the beginning of the Great Depression. Throughout his childhood, he worked countless jobs to help support his family, eventually moving from Oklahoma to Kansas to farm 3,000 acres of rented Kansas farmland with his grandparents when he was 18. There, he met the love of his life, Frances Cole, with whom he celebrated 76 years of marriage together last year. By 1966, Cecil had invested in agricultural equipment manufacturing and, by 1984, he had become an oil and gas producer in Kansas. At the end of his life, Cecil was the largest independent oil and gas producer in the entire State of Kansas, and he owned those original 3,000 acres that he rented in 1948, along with farmland across Kansas and Colorado--the fruits of a lifetime of tireless work and ingenuity. Cecil was a jack-of-all-trades. In addition to farming, equipment manufacturing, and oil and gas production, Cecil was a community bank owner, an ethanol producer, and a real estate developer. In 2013, Cecil and Frances established the O'Brate Foundation, which has provided nearly $7 million in college scholarships to students, many of whom grew up in poverty and in the foster care system. Cecil was also a major benefactor to his beloved Oklahoma State University, making transformational investments in the university's athletics programs.…”