Bishop Dunne Alumni Matt Stimson Has a Grand Future - and a "Glorious" past.
If Bishop Dunne 2010 graduate Matt Stimson looks strangely familiar, it may be because you’ve seen him in a mural on the wall at Gloria’s Mexican Restaurant on Davis.
The mural was originally a part of the now defunct restaurant Luckie’s, and was replaced by the property’s current tenant, the sports bar “PhD,” because the new owners wanted more wall space for televisions. The giant mural was updated with Gloria Rubio, Gloria’s owner, painted into it, along with three former Bishop Dunne Catholic School students: Matt Stimson, Holt McElroy, and Woody Paul Lawson, friends since pre-school. The three were chosen to represent the future of Oak Cliff.
Matt says the three were inseparable right through high school, and still keep in touch. “Holt is studying biology and planning on going to medical school,” Matt said, “Woody is currently interning at a public relations firm.”
Matt began his college education at SMU, where his mother, Donna Cotter, works. He transferred to Texas Tech for his sophomore through senior years. “Getting away to a new area of Texas was great,” he says. He interned with a real estate company in between his sophomore and junior years at Texas Tech, and was out to lunch with his father, Bob Stimson, former Oak Cliff Chamber President, when the Chairman of Grand Bank walked by. “I met him and he mentioned the bank had an opening coming up,” says Matt. A year later, with a finance degree in hand, he applied for the Credit Analyst position at Grand Bank and began with his training in the Grand Prairie branch.
Now he’s working in the Dallas location off Zang, where his job is to help analyze customers' credit for loans for local real estate. He works on both personal home loans and commercial loans, and says people looking to purchase a property to fix up to sell or rent is fairly common. He’s looking for a similar property to invest in, as a first home.
His experience at Bishop Dunne helped him to be successful in college. Matt recalls, “I had great teachers. Coach Alfers was my basketball coach and we made it to the district playoffs my senior year. I took his history and “Sixties” courses and enjoyed both.” He mentioned his other favorite classes from Sister Carol George for math in 7th grade through his senior calculus course with Kevin Braun. “Miss Bove and Miss Myers – I guess she’s Mrs. Ramirez now – were also great!”
He has fond memories of senior retreat with Mr. Jim Martin, and his time in the FBLA Club and on the golf team. “Bishop Dunne’s diversity was a bonus, because you get to mingle with all different kinds of people." He adds, "lPlus the workload here was so much more than a typical high school, so college seemed almost easy.”
He’s considering working towards a Master’s degree in the future, but for now he’s happy to be in Dallas, at a job he enjoys, in a town with his network of friends and family members.
This proud Falcon is back in Oak Cliff, ready to help people have brighter futures - much like Bishop Dunne did for him.