Focus, passion, integrity
Winners of Be True to Your School contest get visit from Palmiter, race car
The inaugural Be True to Your School contest brought Brennan Palmiter and his stock car to Lebanon, Mo.
By Amanda Carlson,
Associate Editor
It’s one thing to hear about the benefits
of pursuing a career in welding and fabrication from somebody twice your age.
It’s another thing entirely to hear about it
directly from one of your peers.
As 17-year-old Brennan Palmiter stood
up in front of the high school welding students at the Lebanon Technology & Career
Center (LTCC), Lebanon, Mo., winner of
the inaugural Practical Welding Today Be
True to Your School contest, he wasn’t
Brennan the race car driver or Brennan the
spokesman, he was Brennan the teenager.
It’s hard to think of him as a typical
teenager with everything he has going on.
18 PRACTICAL WELDING TODAY
March/April 2009
Besides serving as unofficial youth
spokesman for welding and fabrication,
Palmiter has finished high school 18 months
early, has a national sponsor, a stock car racing career, and currently is on an accelerated
path to earning his AAS degree in industrial
management technology. His Go-Brennan
scholarships, sponsored by Nut, Bolts &
Thingamajigs: The Foundation of the
Fabricators & Manufacturers Association
Intl., is in its third offering on You Tube.
Take away all of that and Palmiter, like
many of the students in the class, likes fast
cars, driving fast cars, and building things.
Palmiter didn’t focus on his own personal successes during this presentation.
Instead, he talked to his peers about what it
takes to be successful; what motivates him;
and how focus, passion, and integrity are a
huge part in finding one’s own path.
Palmiter discovered his passion for competitive racing at an early age. Then he discovered that fabricating bumpers and
repairing his car with his father was not
only fun, it was necessary.
“At first all I thought about was winning, but then I realized a lot more had to
be right before that happened. That’s when
I got my focus,” Palmiter told the class.
“As a race car driver, you’re going to do
a lot more wrecking than you are winning.
And unless you’ve got someone paying for
it, you have to know how to be able to fix
things yourself.”
