Leatherback retirees talk about their time with the company
For more than 50 years Leatherback Industries has been providing
factory jobs in Hollister to men and women in the felt paper
industry.
Leatherback retirees talk about their time with the company
For more than 50 years Leatherback Industries has been providing factory jobs in Hollister to men and women in the felt paper industry.
In September, the current employees will clock out for the last time as Leatherback closes its doors permanently. The 60-plus employees will receive a compensation package, according to a press release from the company.
Some of the first employees at the factory have long been retired. Willis Dooling was not the first employee at Leatherback Industries when the company opened its doors in Hollister sometime in 1951, but he was the second employee.
The owner of the company at that time, Roy Anderson, had come out from Illinois, and had hired Dan Galli as the first local employee. There was also the plant manager, John Haigins who came out from the Midwest, Dooling said.
At that time Dooling was working another job across the rail- road tracks from where Leatherback was located – at a lettuce packing shed not far from where their current factory is located along McCray Street.
“Danny [Galli] and I would see each other outside every day while we were working,” Dooling said. “One day he said to me, ‘If you want a job, I think they’re hiring.'”
Dooling soon went to work for Leatherback. The company operated a small saturator and they would dip paper to make stucco that was used in construction of walls and roofs, Dooling said.
Over the next decade the company grew in size and somewhere around 1960, the owners decided to build a felt plant.
“I remember they leased the property from the railroad and started a paper mill,” Dooling said. “Then when they started with the felt paper, they needed a bigger saturator, so they built one of those as well.”
The paper mill was located along Hillcrest Road and the felt plant was located next to what is now McCray Street.
Dooling spent the following 39 years of his career driving a forklift for Leatherback.
He retired in 1989.
Larry Miller was another long-time employee with the company. He went to work at the paper mill in the late 1970s and worked there until the late ’80s, Miller said.
“I drove a forklift there for about eight years,” Miller said. “At the time, they’d started taking on several more employees, but there still couldn’t have been more than 20 of us.”
During his time there, Miller said the company expanded its product line and offered more paper products.
“Eventually, I left because I found a better job,” Miller said. “But they take care of their employees. They had a pretty good union and I got treated well. I made several friends while I was there and I’ve kept in touch with them, though none of them are still with Leatherback.”
Several years ago GAF Materials Corp. purchased Leatherback and made it a subsidiary of the New Jersey-based company, according to the company’s Web site.
Last week the company announced they would be closing their Hollister location citing reasons of a declining housing market and competitor growth as the main reasons for their closure in a press release.
“I really feel bad for the people who lost their jobs,” Miller said. “I know with some of the guys I worked with, they started there after they got out of high school and have never had another job. That sucks.”
