| LeRoy Collins |
Full Name: Thomas LeRoy Collins
Born: March 10, 1909, Tallahassee, Fla.
Died: March 12, 1991, Tallahassee, Fla.
Legacy Bricks: Legacy Walk Map Link
1981 Moore-Stone Award HOF - Loc 44
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| FSU Career |
| Moore-Stone Award | |
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| Member of the FSU Hall of Fame |
| Elected into the FSU Hall of Fame in 1981 |
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The Florida State University Athletic Department presents the Moore-Stone Award for Outstanding Service to Florida State Athletics to LeRoy Collins. As Tallahassee citizen and legislator he
supported the young Florida State University and its athletic program. As Governor, his influence helped bring about the Florida State-Florida series, and his support of Seminole athletics
significantly aided in the growth of the Florida State program. Wise counselor and faithful friend, LeRoy Collins deserves the gratitude of Seminoles everywhere. Obituary for Thomas LeRoy Collins From the Tallahassee Democrat, March 13, 1991, page 1. Gov. Collins: A noble life ends By Andy Lindstrom, Democrat staff writer Former Gov. LeRoy Collins, hailed as "Floridian of the century" for his leadership in the civil-rights era, died Tuesday at his Tallahassee home, The Grove. He was 82. As governor from 1955 to 1961, Collins nudged a sometimes grumbling constituency to confront its own social conscience. In the turbulent 1960s, he became a symbol of the moderate South - nationally acclaimed for recognizing the legitimacy of Martin Luther King's dream only to find his own political aspirations dashed. Collins spent six years in Washington, two of them as President Johnson's representative to promote peaceful compliance with federal law. But after a 1965 meeting with King on a road near Selma, Ala., he never recaptured Florida's public support. Three years later, Collins' defeat in a race for the U.S. Senate ended a political career that had stretched from Leon County to the nation's capital. Collins, the state's 33rd governor, was stricken by lung cancer more than a year ago. He marked his 82nd birthday Sunday at the Grove, the historic plantation home where he and his wife, Mary Call Collins, had lived since 1941. Biographer Tom Wagy compared Collins to Civil War President Abraham Lincoln. Central Florida University historian Jerrell Shofner calls him "the best man who's ever been in the Governor's Mansion." A smooth talker Soft-spoken and courtly, with a silver tongue and the wavy-haired good looks that many compared to a matinee idol's, Collins never seemed destined for political martyrdom. Fewer than 5,000 people lived in Florida's sleepy state capital on March 10, 1909, when Marvin and Mattie Collins named their fourth child - and third son - Thomas LeRoy. Tallahassee's unpaved streets quickly ran to farm roads and plantation lanes. Except as servants and tenant farmers, black residents kept to a world apart. Collins' grandfather was a circuit-riding Methodist preacher who served as a chaplain in the Confederate Army. His father ran a middling-prosperous general-goods store on Monroe Street. In the capital city's rigidly stratified white society, Collins wrote a 1971 poem, he gre up as a middle-class "hominy-husker." "Golddusters" were the upper crust and "depot greasers" the poor whites. Fair play, hard work, honesty and allegiance to church were the virtues he was taught. Private enterprise offered the key to a better life for all. The Collins family lived on East Park Avenue - the edge of town in those days. J.D. Williamson, a childhood friend, recalled that Collins was only a fair athlete but a good shot and an enterprising young businessman. "He used to clerk at Byrd's grocery store on Monroe and Park," Williamson said. "I remember how he would talk to the little old ladies, pick out groceries for them and then take them to their cars. Sometimes, he was a little naive. You know, trusting folks too much. But he was always a real diplomat, a smooth talker. Even then." At old Leon High School, Collins was senior-class president and played cornet in the city band. To bolster his bank account, he milked cows, peddled newspapers and boiled peanuts on the Capitol steps. His first land speculation - $20 for a lot at auction - wiped out his savings. The call of politics In 1931, after finally deciding on law for a career, Collins journeyed north to Cumberland University in Tennessee because it promised a degree in one year. "Then I came home," he told Wagy, "boldly hung out my shingle - and proceeded to starve." It wasn't long before politics beckoned. His first campaign - in 1932, for Leon County prosecutor - ended in a 268-vote loss. Until 1968, it was the last election he would ever lose. "He was a born leader," said lawyer Wil Varn, a friend since the early 1950s. "People just believed in him." Three weeks after the prosecutor's setback, Collins married Mary Call Darby, the great-granddaughter of territorial governor Richard Keith Call. He helped start a Young Democrats Club and the first Jaycee chapter in Tallahassee. He became a regular in the Catfish Club. "We were just a bunch of Franklin Roosevelt Democrats," said Allen Morris, also a member of the club. "We would meet once a month and start talking until something struck a spark. A hospital for the city, pasteurized milk. The wives were allowed to prepare dessert." Even then, Morris said, Collins was the most sincere and honest person he ever knew. "He was hip-deep in personality." Morris said. Charming, witty, an accomplished stage performer and - by 1934 - a rising star on Florida's political scene. Running for state representative from Leon County that year, Collins tripled the vote of his three opponents. Two years later, he gave his first radio speech and campaigned on the slogan "One good term deserves another." During World War II, Collins spent three years in the Navy without ever boarding a ship. His assignment: prosecuting court-martials in Seattle. At war's end, Collins again teamed up with Speaker of the House Dan McCarty - dubbed by news reporters as the "White Knights" of progressive reform. When McCarty became governor in 1952 on a platform of better education, fairer taxes and more equitable voting districts, Collins was elated. But before the year was out, McCarty died in office. His successor, Charley Johns, dismantled most of the changes. "It was heart-breaking," Collins said. And decided to run for governor himself. Wresting with race Race relations never seemed to be a major issue in those early days, contemporaries recall. The governor's election in 1954 boiled down to Johns, the old-guard conservative, vs. Collins, a business progressive. Collins was a "master salesman," Morris said, pushing for new industry and a stronger economic climate. After a landslide victory, Collins turned to bigger game: Reapportionment of a Legislature dominated by the small-county lawmakers whom Tampa newspaperman James Clendinen first called the "Pork Chop Gang." The reapportionment battle proved long and frustrating, Collins said. It was up to later governors to reap the benefits of ground he had broken. As for defending what had long been called "the Southern way of life," Collins issued a position paper on Feb. 2, 1956. "We will have segregation in this state by lawful and peaceful means," he said. "We will not have our state torn asunder by rioting and disorder and violence…" Over the years, though, Collins' position gradually changed. While other governors closed schools and winked at mob violence against civil-rights demonstrators, Collins vetoed bills that tried to thwart what he called "the need for measured change." "It was no sudden light that came to me," Collins once said of his conversion. "Just a gradual strengthening of my sense of responsibility." As late as 1958, Collins was able to say in Look magazine that "I regard integration in and for itself as no proper goal." At the same time, he continued, "developing a healthy climate for racial tolerance is a very high goal." Some critics of Collins' shift blamed it on a taste for national recognition. In 1960, Collins earned high praise as chairman of the Democratic National Convention. Some even talked of nominating him for vice president to run with John F. Kennedy. Nothing came of it, though, except for the growing disenchantment Florida Democrats were showing for a national platform that included anti-discrimination planks on housing, voting and employment, along with a school-integration plan by 1963. "We can never stop Americans from struggling to be free," Collins said in a televise speech from Jacksonville. According to newspaper reports, camera operators in the studio glared at him. Out of the public eye After his second term as governor ended in 1961, Collins left Florida to become president of the National Association of Broadcasters. Through 1966, he lived in Washington and continued to speak out on a number of controversial topics. With the NAB, he called for an end to televised cigarette advertisements. A $50-million channel-swapping deal be a Tampa public-broadcasting station he blasted as "blood money." Florida's death penalty, he said, was "a gutter of shame." States-rights efforts to block the enforcement of federal laws, "a hoax that was settled in the Civil War." "Roy never did hesitate to voice his opinions," Allen Morris recalled with a smile. "Sometimes they came back to haunt him." After the Senate defeat of 1968, Collins stepped out of public life. He joined one of Tallahassee's most prestigious law firms (Ervin, Varn, Jacobs, Odom and Ervin), wrote a book ("Forerunners Courageous," to pay off his campaign debts) and settled into semi-retirement at The Grove. Neighbors recalled him up at dawn each day for a four-mile jog through Oakland Cemetery. ("there's no traffic out there," he once said. "I get to commune with all my old friends.") Later, he would fix a huge breakfast to serve Mary Call in bed. In his library, Collins gathered an impressive collection of Florida lore. He liked to attend Florida State University football games, kept a boat at Carrabelle and a retreat on Dog Island. For the most part, fiends said, Roy and Mary Call enjoyed their privacy and their family, which includes 12 grandchildren and one great grandchild. The Collins' oldest son, Roy, Jr., took up real estate and banking in Tampa; daughters Jane Aurell and Mary Call Proctor married Tallahassee lawyers John K. Aurell and Palmer Proctor. Daughter Darby Begeman lives in Miami and is married to dentist Fred Begeman. Collins' brother, Marvin Collins, Jr. and one sister, Mrs. Howell Wadsworth, live in Tallahassee while another sister, Mrs. Robert Evans, lives in Tampa. At the end, many of Collins' old friends mourned the decision by President Johnson that sent him to Selma. "It was the worst thing that ever happened to him," one said. If he ever agreed, Collins never let on. But a comment he made about the struggle to pass a fair reapportionment plan in the face of "Pork Chop Gang" opposition might serve as a clue. "Many of my best friends advised me that I was just spitting in the
wind," he said in a 1983 interview. "Well, somebody's got to spit in this wind if we're going to ever have any change." |
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