When Jim Leatherwood’s grandfather came to Dublin in 1915, he went to work for the Dublin National Bank. He worked his way up to chairman, and eventually bought a bank himself in Gustine.
More than 100 years later, Jim Leatherwood has dedicated his life to continuing that family legacy as the founder of the First National Bank of Dublin.
Leatherwood graduated from Dublin High School in 1971, and went on to attend Tarleton State University. In 1972, his family opened a dairy, so he managed the farm on the side.
After graduating from Tarletonin1974, Leatherwood earned his real estate license. “This is my 50th year of being a licensed realtor in Texas,” he said.
His first job out of college was as a teller at the First Comanche Bank. He balanced this job with a trucking business he’d been running since high school. The next year, he went to work at his family bank in Gustine (the one his grandfather had bought).
He worked there until in 1985, at just 31 years old, Leatherwood chartered and founded the First National Bank of Dublin.
But through persistence he made it work, and the bank — now the oldest bank in Erath County — will celebrate its 40th anniversary in May of 2025.
Leatherwood was involved with every step of the process, even the construction of the building. “I carved my initials in the concrete when it was soft on the top of the vault,” he said. “If you look up in the attic and you walk over to where the vault is, look on the northwest corner of the top, and it has whatever day in May it was that they poured it.”
The next year, following a constitutional amendment that changed banking rules in Texas to allow branches of banks to open away from the primary location, applied and received approval for a branch of the First State Bank in DeLeon. It was one of the first branch banks in Texas, and Leatherwood had to jump through legal hoops to open it, including working with the then-state treasurer Ann Richards.
In the 1990s, following a merger, the First State Banks became First National Banks.
In 2007, after years spent as president of the First National Bank of Dublin, Leatherwood stepped away from the bank and put his real estate training to more use. “I went to work for a company out of Midland doing land acquisition and developing commercial wind projects,” he said.
He worked for the company for a little over seven years, then worked for a few different companies as a land acquisition specialist for wind and solar in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and Illinois. One of the companies he worked with was NextEra Energy Transmission, the largest green energy company in the world.
Leatherwood retired from contracting in March of 2024 (or as he says, he’s “between engagements”). He continues to run his own real estate business. He’s stayed active in the Dublin community, serving as mayor for 8 years in the 1980s and 90s and also on the city council.
Leatherwood and his wife of nearly 50 years, Laura, live in Dublin and have two children, Elise and Gabe.
Laura spent her career as a teacher, earning a masters degree in elementary education and teaching in DeLeon, Lingleville and Dublin. “She is retired from Dublin Elementary and still substitutes when she is needed,” says Leatherwood. “She is very active in the First Methodist Church and has been with me through thick and thin for nearly 50 years.”
Leatherwood has lived within the same four blocks in Dublin all his life, and has enjoyed seeing the town develop around him. “This road beside my house, I’ve been walking down since it was 12 feet between barbed wire fences,” he said. “You go up, and there’s an old dairy barn, and my brother and I would go walk down there. I was four years old. He was five years old. We’d walk down there to see my dad and see how things were going at the dairy.”
These days, his hobby is still working on his family farm. Throughout his life, Leatherwood has drawn inspiration from his grandfather, who encouraged him to go into banking and instilled in him a strong work ethic.
The older Leatherwood was the chairman of Dublin National Bank for 30 years, ran an insurance business, and still found time to help Leatherwood with his chores on the dairy. He’d prep the milking machinery and help put out hay, and all of this made Leatherwood feel pretty special.
Recently, while talking to an old friend about his grandfather, Leatherwood learned that his grandfather went out of his way to help out other people in the community too. “I guess I wasn’t as special as I thought — but my grandfather was,” he said.
Leatherwood offers the following advice to Dublin graduates: “It’s just like you’ve heard before — if you like what you’re doing, you don’t ever have to work a day in your life,” he said. “Whatever my job was, I’ve always really liked it.” Editor’s Note: This column chronicles what Dublin graduates have done since high school. If you have any suggestions for other grads, email publisher@dublincitizen. com.