In this episode of the Oil and Gas Measurement Podcast, Weldon Wright is joined by Don Sextro and John Brackett to discuss the International School of Hydrocarbon Measurement and what attendees can expect from this year’s program. The conversation covers the school’s history, the range of classes and hands-on training available, the exhibitor experience, and the broader value of industry education and networking.

Previewing ISHM Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• International School of Hydrocarbon Measurement (ISHM) Annual industry school focused on hydrocarbon measurement education across technical and non-technical disciplines.
• American School of Gas Measurement Technology (ASGMT) A similar long-running measurement school referenced as a counterpart to ISHM, particularly for natural gas measurement training.
• American Petroleum Institute (API) Industry body whose standards committees are heavily represented at schools like ISHM and ASGMT.
• Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Production Measurement Team Federal regulatory presence discussed in the context of measurement requirements, guidance, and industry interaction.
• Custody transfer Measurement performed for the transfer of product ownership, where accuracy and repeatability are especially important.
• Coriolis meter A flow measurement technology discussed as part of the range of devices covered in school sessions and hands-on training.
• Ultrasonic measurement A major measurement technology mentioned in the context of lecture classes, device operation, and future industry direction.
• Tank gauging Measurement of liquid level and inventory in storage tanks, referenced as one of the practical class topics taught by exhibitors and subject matter experts.
• Hazardous areas Classified operating environments where equipment design, installation, and compliance requirements are especially important.
• Hands-on classes Practical sessions where attendees can work directly with measurement equipment and better understand setup, operation, and troubleshooting.
• Demonstration classes Structured sessions focused on showing how specific technologies or devices work in the field.
• Fundamentals of Gas Measurement Introductory course path intended for newer personnel or those building foundational knowledge in gas measurement.
• Historical exhibit A recurring ISHM feature that showcases legacy measurement devices and the evolution of industry technology over time.
• Loss control Back-office and operational discipline focused on investigating imbalance, loss, and measurement-related discrepancies.
• Scholarship program ISHM-supported financial assistance for students in college or trade school who are preparing to enter hydrocarbon measurement and related industries.
• Networking One of the most emphasized benefits of attending, including access to operators, manufacturers, standards participants, regulators, and peers across the industry.

Previewing ISHM Full Episode Transcript

Announcer: Welcome to Episode 55 of the Oil and Gas Measurement Podcast, sponsored by FPV Prime, the provider of Muddy Boots field operations software, assisting oil and gas operators to implement accurate and repeatable measurement activities across their entire operation while also simplifying data collection from the field. Find out more about Muddy Boots at corp dot com.

Welcome to the Oil and Gas Measurement Podcast, where measurement professionals, bubba geeks, and gurus share their knowledge, experience, and likely a tall tale or two on measurement topics for the oil and gas industry. And now, your host, Weldon Wright.

Weldon Wright: Hello, and welcome to Episode 55, I believe, of the Oil and Gas Measurement Podcast. We’re here today to talk about the International School of Hydrocarbon Measurement, or ISHM, which is coming up fairly soon.

And we have here today with us Don Sextro and John Brackett, who are both members of the ISHM committee, or the ISHM board. I forget which is which in any particular year.

But Don, hello, and tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do for a living, and what you do for ISHM.

Don Sextro: Hi, Weldon. It’s good to see you. I’m Don Sextro, as you said. I work for Targa Resources. I help support the measurement activities that we have here, where we’re measuring natural gas, natural gas liquids, and crude oil to move them from one location to another and to make sure that we do it in an appropriate fashion.

I am the executive committee chairman this year for ISHM. And as you had talked about, Weldon, there are really two committees. The executive committee takes care of some of the supporting things like paying bills and making sure that contracts are in place. And the general committee, of which John will talk about, actually puts the school on.

And ISHM is coming up Tuesday through Thursday, May 12 through 14, so we’re just over a month away.

Weldon Wright: Okay. Coming down the path pretty fast, isn’t it?

Don Sextro: Yes, it is. It’ll be here before we know it.

Weldon Wright: Well, John, tell us a little about yourself and what your bona fides are, what you do there.

John Brackett: Well, I’ve been coming to ISHM since I was a little boy, and that’s because I was fortunate enough to be born into this industry. I’ve grown up working for our family business for the majority of my background, and that business is W.L. Walker Company. We actually just had our centennial this next year.

My background is really to do with the manufacturing side to support the oil and gas industry. I’ve been serving on the American Petroleum Institute standards for well over 14 years, or 13 years professionally. I’ve known Don for pretty much my whole life and many of the committee members.

As Don mentioned, I serve on the general committee, and this year’s role for me, every year you change your role and progress through. One day you’ll become the executive committee. And for me, that might be in 25 or 30 years. So Don’s put a lot of commitment in to get to where he’s at, and I think he needs to be applauded for it.

So I’m the low man on the totem pole, but that’s not to say the job is not important. My job is publications. And I will put a plug in here for our new LinkedIn page. We’ve got a lot of things that we’re changing on the social media side, and we want people to pay attention.

We hope everyone gets to register before the May 5 deadline and see us at ISHM.

Weldon Wright: So May 5. Let’s hype that just a little bit there. When it comes to registration, what it costs, and I’m sure there’s probably a late registration if you wanted to pay more, right?

John Brackett: That’s what happens on May 6. That’s right. You’re going to have to pay a little more on May 6, but you can register on site and come on in even if you miss that deadline. In some years, that’s a long line.

Weldon Wright: It’s worth paying early.

So before we talk about this year’s ISHM, Don, take a few minutes here and tell us the history of ISHM, what ISHM does, what it’s all about, and how it got there.

Don Sextro: Sure. This is, Weldon, the 99th school year. ISHM started in 1924, but we have missed several years, going from recently the two years we lost during Covid, one year in World War II, and apparently one year during the Depression. So going back over a century is a lot of years.

ISHM provides a lot of very solid and worthwhile measurement instruction, both for technical and for non-technical subjects, that help people across the industry. From us, the technicians in the field who are actually touching devices, to people in the labs who are analyzing samples, to engineers designing and installing equipment, accounting folks who are working with the resulting numbers, and our management folks as well.

So we provide some very solid educational background for people who are working with natural gas, with crude oil, with refined products, with LNG, across our industry.

Weldon Wright: Well, you know, we have fish in Oklahoma City, and ISHM is in a good-natured competition, if you will, with ASGMT, the American School of Gas Measurement Technology, down in Houston. Both of these groups have large histories.

And when you look at the committees that put on these training conferences, the instructors at these training conferences, the vendors at them, the overlap has got to be 90 percent or more, right, between the committee members?

Don Sextro: There is a lot of overlap. I’m probably one of the few ASGMT committee members that’s not part of it, but these schools are both out there for the same thing, to try to bring low-cost, easy-format training to folks.

Whether it’s somebody that wants their training with hopes of getting in the industry, whether it’s new hires down at the bottom that their boss needs to give them some training, or even, hey, I’ve got a roustabout job, maybe if I use three or four days of my vacation I can get some measurement training and convince them to let me go on the other side. All those things take place, as well as more advanced training for the more advanced folks that are there.

Weldon Wright: Right. There’s something for everybody from brand new to the 30- and 40-year-old guys there, right, Don?

Don Sextro: There is. We have fundamental level classes, we have intermediate classes, and advanced. It is convenient. The schools are set up to be conveniently located so that people can come make it work into their schedule.

It’s important to know that the cost is really low. You had mentioned that the investment is in the person’s time and the person’s interest, going in and being able to not only learn from the instructors, very top-notch, world-class instruction, but also to get to know people in the industry, to make connections, to understand equipment that’s available, and changes in the measurement world that are going on all the time.

Weldon Wright: And a lot of the networking is probably, to me, possibly the most valuable thing. And not only the networking for what might be your next job if your company gets bought or sold, right, but also the networking with the vendors.

And I’m going to ask John to talk a little bit here now about this. But one of the things, if you’re a new technician in the field and you haven’t seen a lot of this hardware, there’s no better place than that exhibit hall to put your hands on stuff.

And at the exhibit shows at both ASGMT and ISHM, the ISHM exhibitors are there much more in an educational role. They’re there to help you learn about their products, take your questions. So if you’re a new guy, spend some time in that hall and look at the pieces so you know what people are talking about when they talk about this particular gizmo or gadget, right?

And also don’t hesitate to ask questions. Make those relationships. You know, when I first moved from the manufacturing world to the operator’s side, I pulled out that stack of business cards from an instrument and that was half of my phone calls for the month after that.

So, John, tell us a little bit about exhibiting at ISHM. What all’s there, the type of vendors they have there?

John Brackett: Yeah. So I have grown up and I’ve seen it change. I know people say it doesn’t change, but I can tell you it has changed over the years.

I remember as a kid helping my mom unload the truck here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after the Oklahoma City bombing. And I remember vividly when I was in college at the University of Oklahoma helping set up the booths every year during finals week and being told that you can’t put that out, you can’t put this out, you can’t put that out.

And I know that bugs some people, but it keeps the focus on that intent of educating people. And I find that when you take that to heart, it becomes much more of a forum for open discussion between both the student and the exhibitor to not only show and teach about what that product is, or what that device does, or what that technology does, but also then to give back to the exhibitor and improve not only the product, but the processes and the systems.

And I know that it kind of comes off as a different kind of school, but that’s the point of it. It gets people to engage.

Being shuffled around every year is nice compared to other locations and other trade programs, and I’ve always appreciated the setup as an exhibitor. And I think part of that too comes down to having a great staff on the back end that we have with Betsy. Betsy, and the exhibitors who are listening to this know Betsy goes out of her way every year and gets things taken care of.

It’s always good and a great show, a great school to attend, and just having that discourse.

And I’ll add too, on the topic of the people who come to these things, pretty much everyone who is a part of the API standards organization is there. And that becomes also a de facto way to have that discourse or dialogue and keep a pulse on the problems that are facing the industry so that you can better provide solutions or answers to those questions as they come up.

And it builds that camaraderie to help solve those problems when we get faced with challenges. And don’t take arguments too seriously later on after a heated API discussion because it’s really a family.

And you see that even on the exhibitor side. I have no business being in some of the other exhibitors’ booths, but the friendships and relationships that we have, our paths don’t cross, but you build that in that exhibitors’ hall, not just with the students and the companies, the end users, but also with fellow exhibitors. And I think that’s very important to note.

Weldon Wright: Well put. Well put.

You know, you talk about heated discussions at API. Let’s clarify that a little bit. The discussions get heated because everybody involved is passionate. And these standards organizations are industry-led standards organizations. Our industry standards come from reaching consensus, reaching agreement, negotiating. A lot better than what’s going on over there in the streets right now, but negotiating what’s the best answer for our industry, right?

So you’ll have API strongly represented there, folks with GPA, maybe even some AGA folks. But then also at ISHM, you’re going to have a strong BLM presence. You’ll have at least one, if not two, presentations by BLM, as well as several BLM folks there. So it’s an opportunity to talk to those guys and ladies at some time other than when they’ve got their clipboard out as they get out of their truck and they’re staring down your sights, right?

John Brackett: True.

Weldon Wright: So I think that it’s clear to talk about here the wide variety of different classes we have. Don brushed over a couple. John talked a little bit about some of the vendors, but I’d like to dive into that a little bit deeper.

Let’s go back to John a minute. I don’t want to give too much time to think here, but John, one thing is that at both places, vendors are probably teaching, I don’t know, the majority of the classes. I don’t know how far the majority goes, right? But a lot of classes are vendor-led.

Some of those are by the experts in the industry that have been at places like, been on the vendor side for many years. There’s also hands-on training. There’s instructional how-to-use-the-equipment.

Touch a little bit on the variety of stuff you see there, John.

John Brackett: Well, starting with the hands-on, there’s a system in place to make sure that one manufacturer of, say, a Coriolis meter teaches it one year and then another year another manufacturer teaches it another, because with hands-on you have to be kind of product-specific and there has to be a balance. And we have to be respectful of the fact that this is a school.

So with the exhibitors that teach classes, we have a lot, probably a greater amount, of exhibitor-led discussion. And because of that, we have monitoring assignments, of course, like all the other schools do, to make sure that things stay within the guidelines of the correct discourse for the topic.

But at the end of the day, those are the people who have the most invested time into that product type or product technology set, probably best suited to speak to it. And I think the school forces them also to think about it from the user’s point of view and bring some of that into their dialogue.

For example, I teach several classes on tank measurement, tank gauging, as we have for years. And I try and always incorporate other vendors and other manufacturers into my slides to be nonpartisan, make this really about the technology type or the school and the students learning.

As Don said too, there’s classes from fundamentals all the way up to advanced, including a fundamentals course, which has limited availability for gas. It’s a gas-specific program. So it even gets its own dedicated book that you go to these specific things because, at the end of the day, and as we kind of were showing here, I know people can’t see it on the video, but one of the first schools was 1932.

I have the picture of everyone in their three-piece suits standing in front of Evans Hall at the University of Oklahoma here that I need to get on the website. But it was the Southwestern Short Course in Gas Measurement, was the original name. And it has always been fundamentally a gas measurement course.

So that gas short course that we still maintain is a great, great area for people to come into.

And one of the great things that ISHM does there is right up there at the front of the exhibit hall every year, they have their historical exhibit, the Stevens Gauge historical exhibit memorial. And that exhibit is just a walk through time for measurement.

There’s equipment out there in the historical exhibit that you would be hard-pressed to find still in service. You might, if you look hard enough, but it’s great just to look at what folks were doing before everything was electronic, right?

Weldon Wright: Look at those manual integrators, those mercury meters.

John Brackett: Yeah. Those are Ranarex gravity meters.

Weldon Wright: Ranarex. I’ve tried to block those out of my mind.

So, Don, I might expand just a little, as John was talking about the hands-on. We have hands-on and demonstration classes that really, from a technician’s perspective, if they have this type of device that they’re having to deal with, here’s a perfect opportunity to go in and really get to understand what’s going on with that device, how to use it, and what could go wrong. And the other people in the room get some other experience, maybe. It says, here are the things that I’ve run into. How do I fix this or not, and what do I need to do here?

In the lecture classes, John was saying that those are about the technology and not about the vendor, not about the manufacturer. We’re going to talk generically about ultrasonic measurement for custody transfer, for instance. Here are the things you need to know about this. This is the way it works. Here’s where this may be going in the future.

We can talk later about measurement not being a static type of activity, that products are changing, technology is changing, and the standards, as a result, change, even though we think this ought to be simple and straightforward and you just do it one time and now you know how to do it, right?

You know, what’s there at ISHM spans such an area. We talk about these schools, we think about measurement devices, ultrasonic meters, Coriolis meters, provers, but in reality there’s something there for practically everyone.

Our industry is a broad industry. Saying I’m in measurement and thinking, well, I’m in gas measurement or crude or liquid measurement, that doesn’t necessarily narrow it down a whole lot. There’s something there for everyone from that new tech in the field, that experienced tech, the people who sit in the offices dealing with the standards.

I mean, every one of the standards groups will put on a short presentation about what’s changing, what’s the new standards that are out, what’s coming up. That in itself is worth the price of admission just to get that from the horse’s mouth.

The same thing for BLM. We normally have a presentation from BLM about where they are and where their focuses are going forward. That’s invaluable, not just for that guy out in the field, but for his supervisor, his foreman, for that measurement manager, that measurement director, right?

And there’s also information there for the back-office employees, the analysts, the loss control guy. Great classes every year on loss control, on loss investigation, balancing, quite a wide realm of classes there. You won’t be bored regardless of what area of measurement you’re in.

John Brackett: Yeah, and if I can add too, from an exhibitor standpoint, from a manufacturer standpoint too, there are also resources such as classes like Understanding Hazardous Areas, which is taught by a gentleman from CSA, a very knowledgeable gentleman from CSA, for a better understanding.

And so you gain stuff too, not just being an end user. Manufacturers can gain knowledge on how and what they can do to better build their equipment by coming to these things too.

Weldon Wright: Absolutely.

You know, we have folks that have been in the industry their entire career. We have folks like John who’ve been on the manufacturing side, the supplier side all their years.

I kind of had an interesting way into the industry. I’ve actually probably been on all the sides. I started out in this industry working for a utility company. I worked for a few years for an equipment manufacturer. They’re no longer there. They’ve been absorbed by others. But I spent some time with Bristol Babcock years ago, went from there to working on the operator side, and then back around to the supplier, to software suppliers, and into consulting.

So I’ve seen a lot of all pieces of the industry, and I assure you there is something there for people attending as students from every one of those sectors. And there are going to be people from every one of those sectors there, holding and teaching classes, sharing their knowledge, sharing their experience.

Don Sextro: Yes. One of the biggest challenges that a person will have coming to the school is to figure out what classes to go to because there are so many choices. And from that you can take one class per class period, not 19.

So pick what you need and work through. What that tells you is that there’s a, as we were talking about, breadth of the industry, but it also says don’t have your expectations that you only need to go one time and you’ll have it all.

This is something that is repeated. We have ISHM every year, and it’s common for people to return and return and return.

Weldon Wright: So, Don, hope I don’t catch you off guard with this. How many individual classes will you all have during ISHM this year? You know that number off the top? A good guess is fine, a good guess or maybe the precise number. This is measurement we’re talking about here, right?

Don Sextro: Two hundred and forty-five lecture classes. We have 75 hands-on demonstration classes. And then John talked about the 10-hour, separate, focused Fundamentals of Natural Gas Measurement class. So a lot of hours of instruction.

Weldon Wright: And that’s going on in how many choices? In the average hour, how many different choices will folks have of what they’ll attend?

Don Sextro: Well, now you’re asking the typical question. I think it’s 25.

Weldon Wright: Twenty-five?

Don Sextro: We have 25 concurrent rooms, 25-plus concurrent rooms in any one period, yes.

Weldon Wright: So you’ve got to do your homework before you show up on day one, don’t you?

Don Sextro: That’s right. But don’t let it overwhelm you. Go. Go take part in these classes.

Weldon Wright: And don’t just go to the coffee machine or coffee kiosk and stand around there.

With that 75 hands-on, 245 total classes, to go with that, I think you’ll have right at 130 separate exhibitors this year. I want to say it’s more than that, isn’t it normally?

John Brackett: I think it’s at least 130, and a lot of exhibit space. It’s an interesting place to be, lots of things to see. And you can look at and touch everything from simple transmitters to the newest highest calibrator to safety devices to proving trailers.

Weldon Wright: Yeah. We tend to be people who want to put our hands on things. And that’s the way I learn. I don’t know about everybody else out there, but seeing that stuff, putting my hands on it, asking those questions, that’s one of the beautiful things that ISHM, as well as ASGMT and the other schools throughout the country, all offer.

Now, I don’t know what else you all might have to say, but I can’t talk about ISHM and ASGMT in the same discussion without pointing out that we hold ISHM in tornado season in the middle of Tornado Alley, and we hold ASGMT during hurricane season on the Gulf Coast.

I’m not going to put anybody on the spot, but you would think the two groups could get together and just swap dates somehow. But that’s incredibly complex, isn’t it?

Don Sextro: That’s incredibly complex. And just to point out, two years ago, the weather in Oklahoma City was beautiful. And there was a derecho that came through Houston and blew out windows downtown during, at the end of ISHM on that Thursday.

John Brackett: Looking back at this 1932 photograph, it is dated 4-27-32. So, you know, April 27. So even going back then, it was held back then.

But this is a fun fact that many people don’t know. The original editions were held there in the North Base hangar, which is at the same place where they filmed the final scene of Twister, where they strapped themselves with the belt. Bill Paxton wraps his belt around the pipe. That was filmed inside the North Base hangar where ISHM first started, or where it was for a long time.

And Norman, until one of my last years as a University of Oklahoma student, had never actually been hit by a tornado, so it was relatively safe to hold ISHM even in April in Norman, because it had never in recorded history gotten hit by a tornado until early 2010 or something like that.

So it’s been a safe place. But the one downside we’ve got now is the Oklahoma City Thunder are going to be in the championship hunt again, more than likely. So we’ll have to contend also with that. So the Thunder and the tornadoes are always a risk of disrupting, but it’ll be all right.

Weldon Wright: We don’t record video here on the Oil and Gas Measurement Podcast. Kind of wish we did on this because John has come equipped with all these great photographs. He keeps holding stuff up and showing stuff there. Too bad we don’t have it this time around.

John Brackett: Well, we’ll get it up on our website, which we have a new website, I believe, coming at some point. And I’ve just recently put together a promotional video, which is on our LinkedIn page, our new LinkedIn page.

We do have a new LinkedIn page that people should check out and join for updates and publications and a more open discussion forum. But I’ll see about posting this picture up so people can see, I mean, just looking at all these suits that are in this photo, you would hate to think how expensive that would be this day and age. Every single person has got a three-piece suit with a hat, some sort of straw hat.

Weldon Wright: You don’t see that anymore. And if that salesman was out in the field helping somebody commission equipment, he would have been wearing that suit, wouldn’t he?

John Brackett: That’s right.

Weldon Wright: Well, this photo is the entire school? All the attendees and the exhibitors?

John Brackett: Wow. That’s great.

Weldon Wright: We can’t do that.

We have a new LinkedIn page. Did y’all put a lot of work into it? And y’all are really driving folks to that LinkedIn page. Your website is hydrocarbon measurements and ishm info works? Hydrocarbon measurements? Okay.

John Brackett: Correct. ISHM dot info.

Weldon Wright: And of course LinkedIn. Anything else you guys would like to add at this time?

John Brackett: That’s the best-kept secret for everything right now. I mean, the important thing is we get people to sign up for that May 5 date so that they don’t get whammied with the price increase. And we do hope for record attendance, as we had last year and the year after.

Next year is going to be the centennial, where we’ve got some really big plans, exciting things planned, maybe some exciting speakers who might come to celebrate our centennial.

So yes, don’t skip this year, but make sure to come this year with a friend and bring someone who’s never come before so you can see what it’s like. So on the centennial year, for the big party, you’re prepared.

Don Sextro: Yes.

Weldon Wright: And this is going to air next week, I guess, so not a lot of lead time left for the school this year.

Always remember, folks, on their website, probably on their new LinkedIn page, the dates are already up there for 2007 and probably a couple of years past that. If you can’t make ISHM this year in Oklahoma City, we do something very similar down in Houston with ASGMT, and you can see a lot of the same smiling faces there as you would in Oklahoma City.

Don Sextro: Yep. Come to them both.

John Brackett: That’s my suggestion to everyone. You ought to make three or four of these schools a year in my book.

Weldon Wright: Yeah, I did ADMT this year and it was a good school, a good program, and it’ll be exciting to see the new location next year.

Y’all just did that two years ago, right? Three? Are you three years now in the new location for ISHM? You moved from the Cox Center. It might have been four years ago now.

John Brackett: Oh no, it was before Covid. We actually toured the new center as they were finishing it. They were still painting it when we walked through. And that was one of the years we ended up skipping because they weren’t sure if they could open it. And it wasn’t because of it not being completed, but legally, with all the forced closures and all that that were still being put on, the city wasn’t willing to let us have the event.

So I think that would have been 22. So the first school would have been in 23. We missed 20, no, no, we missed 2020 and 2021. So that was in 2022, was our first school in the new center.

Weldon Wright: Yeah. And it is a nice facility.

John Brackett: Yeah. And the whole area is fixing to change. They just announced a UFL team is coming to Oklahoma City.

Weldon Wright: Oh really?

John Brackett: And they’re building a new soccer stadium over there by the old Cox Center, I think. Of course, the new basketball arena is going to be where the old Cox Center stood. That’s gone. And then they’ll tear down the current arena to build more of a district-themed center, I think, from what I understand.

Weldon Wright: Yeah, the old Cox Center is a dirt hole in the ground now. It’s different.

Don, quick, before we land this plane, talk to us a bit, just briefly, inform people about the scholarships. Traditionally, sponsors, ISHM sponsors, and has sponsored for some years scholarships for students who are finishing their last two years of college, or they’re in the last half of a trade school.

Don Sextro: Over the years, we have provided over $340,000 worth of scholarships and will continue to do so. So we’re interested in people who are needing scholarships. We’re always looking for scholarship applications, looking for organizations, schools who have students who would benefit from having scholarships.

We touch a number of colleges and trade schools throughout the central and southern U.S.

And I would be remiss, and one of my fellow committee members would poke me if I didn’t say, that we’re also very much willing to receive scholarship donations that we turn around and deploy to people who could really use them, people who are wanting to be part of the measurement world, be in the hydrocarbon measurement business and related industries.

Weldon Wright: So you all can help with the selection, handling the monies, and those sort of things for them.

Don Sextro: We very much do. You know, a very good process for that.

John Brackett: There’s a whole subcommittee just for the approval of the scholarship funds to the students who apply. So it’s quite the process.

And believe it or not, I think a few years ago there was a young gentleman who we gave like $500 or $1,000 to, and he’s already donated back tenfold whatever we gave him. And he’s like clockwork. He was so appreciative. And that kind of thing is great.

There’s even been an endowment fund that’s been established that has grown very large, thanks to the generosity. And we have to hide our checkbooks whenever we go around our committee chair who’s responsible for the donations. But we pull them out pretty quick because it is a good cause.

Weldon Wright: It definitely is.

Don Sextro: I think we awarded just over $60,000 in scholarships last year.

Weldon Wright: Wow. That’s great. That’s amazing. It helps a bunch of people.

Well, great. Gentlemen, any last words before we go? Don’t want to leave anyone with words unsaid.

Don Sextro: Thank you for the opportunity.

John Brackett: Yeah. May 12 through 14. It’ll be great. All right. Come and see me. Bring your Thunder jersey if you’re planning to go to the game.

Weldon Wright: That just makes downtown insane, though, in my book. But that’s for y’all, not me.

Thanks a lot, gentlemen. Y’all have a great day.

Don Sextro: All right. Thank you, Weldon.

John Brackett: Thanks, Weldon.

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If you have comments or questions about this episode, suggestions for other topics, or if you’d like to offer yourself up to the podcast microphone as a guest, please send me a message on LinkedIn or shoot me an email at weldon.wright@fpvprime.com.