Practical Wisdom
In the wake of the Great Depression, Larkin Osborne, a schoolteacher living in Edmund, Oklahoma, found all his savings gone. Like many people at the time, he put his savings in the local bank and was confident that his money would be there when he needed it. But there was a run on the bank, and like millions of others he had to begin all over again. Eventually, he got on with his life, married and started a family –two daughters who shared his fascination with geology and science. He slowly began to accumulate capital and rather than putting it in a bank, he bought shares of local energy and oil companies. “After his experiences in the Great Depression, my father never trusted banks regardless of all the new regulations. But he had an abiding faith in the potential of this country and that the country was going to keep growing,” recalls his oldest daughter, Charlotte Walonick. “He was a practical man and he saw that all these new factories and industries had one thing in common – they needed oil and energy. So he started buying shares in local oil and energy-related stocks,” continued Mrs. Walonick. “Most people don’t realize it, but for a time it felt that Oklahoma was more of an oil state than Texas. We had oil derricks and pumpers all over the place.” As the years went by, Mr. Osborne, who was now principal at the high school in Edmund, had grown his portfolio and expanded his holdings by accumulating shares of other oil and energy-related companies outside of Oklahoma. As you might expect, one of them was Petroleum & Resources Corporation. “My father kept true to his investment philosophy and it never disappointed him. And, it was fun for us kids, because we’d get all these annual reports full of interesting information about exploration and geology. That’s how I got interested in geology. When he passed away, my sister and I were bequeathed his shares. We’ve diversified our portfolio and added some other types of stocks. But we hold onto our energy and oil stocks, especially Petroleum & Resources.”