Ancestors

James Mitchell Collins

James Mitchell Collins was born on 29 April 1916 at Hallsville, in Harrison County, East Texas. He was the first child of Carr Pritchett Collins and Ruth Woodall. His parents had married in Hallsville in November 1914, and Hallsville was his mother's hometown. His Texas birth certificate names them as "C P Collins" and "Elgie Ruth Woodall." A second birth register gives the fuller forms, Carr Pritchett Collins and Elza Ruth Woodall.

He grew up in Dallas. The 1920 census has the family there, with Jim and his younger brother Carr Jr. His brother, Carr Pritchett Collins Jr., had been born in February 1918. A sister, Ruth Elaine, followed in March 1924. A family photograph from 1922 shows the two brothers as small boys. In 1928 their father founded the Fidelity Union Life Insurance Company.

He went to Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas and then to Southern Methodist University. At SMU he was vice-president of the student body and a member of Phi Delta Theta. He took his bachelor's degree in commerce there in 1937. In 1935, while still a student, he arrived at New York by ship with his father. The passenger list carries "James Mitchell Collins, b. 1916 Hallsville Texas" on the same list as Carr Collins.

After SMU he went north for business school. He took a master of business administration at Northwestern University in 1938. In 1940 he qualified as a Chartered Life Underwriter, the professional designation of the life insurance trade. On 16 October 1940 he registered for the draft in Dallas. For the person who would always know his address, he gave his father, Carr P. Collins.

He then went to the Harvard Business School and took a second MBA. His congressional biography dates it to 1943; a family genealogy compiled in 1959 says 1942. At Harvard he met Dorothy Colville Dann, called Dee, who was a student at Wellesley. The family genealogy puts it simply: "Dee and Jim met while he was at Harvard and she at Wellesley." She had been born in 1921 at Carbondale, Pennsylvania. They married on 16 September 1942 at Maplewood, New Jersey.

He went into the Army and served as an officer in the Corps of Engineers. He was a captain, and spent a year and a half in Europe. His official biography says he "participated in the Normandy invasion and fought in France, Belgium, and Germany." The family genealogy gives his serial number, O-515198, and says he was in England before the invasion and then in France and Belgium. It says the French government gave him the Medal of Metz and that he earned four battle stars. SMU adds that he served in General George Patton's Third Army and was awarded the Purple Heart. His first child, Michael James, was born on 30 July 1944 at South Orange, New Jersey.

"After the War, they moved to Dallas," the family genealogy says. Two daughters were born there: Dorothy Colville in October 1946 and Nancy Miles in May 1950. The 1950 census has the family in University Park, the separate town inside Dallas that surrounds the SMU campus.

He went to work selling life insurance for his father's company. In 1955 he became president of Fidelity Union Life. Under him it grew from a Texas company into a national one. In 1978 it was sold for about $300 million. He ran other businesses too. The 1959 genealogy lists him as president of Itasca Cotton Manufacturing, Western Industries, Consolidated Industries and International Industries. He founded A.P.C. Industries and later sold it to IBM. SMU's account adds real estate, oil and gas, electronics, textiles and ranching. He belonged to the Young Presidents' Organization, a club for men who had become company presidents young. In 1955 he was a regional chairman of the White House Conference on Youth. He also served SMU for the rest of his life, as president of its alumni association and as a trustee.

In 1966 he ran for Congress as a Republican in the 3rd District of Texas, which covered north Dallas. The Democratic incumbent, Joe Pool, beat him; Collins took 46 percent. Pool died in office in 1968. Collins ran in the special election to fill the seat and beat Pool's widow. He took his seat on 24 August 1968, the same year he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. He held the seat for eight Congresses, until 3 January 1983.

In Washington he rose to be ranking minority member of the Commerce Committee, the senior Republican on it. He wrote the enabling legislation for the Trinity River park in Dallas. The Washington Post summed up his record: he spoke out against the Nixon administration's handling of the war in Vietnam, opposed school busing to achieve racial integration, and generally opposed increases in government spending, while favoring increases in military appropriations.

In 1972 one of his aides, George A. Haag, was convicted in an $18,000 kickback and payroll scheme involving members of his staff. Haag said that Collins had devised it. Collins denied it and was never charged.

In 1982 he gave up his House seat to run for the United States Senate against the Democrat Lloyd Bentsen. He lost the general election, 59 percent to 41. It was his last race.

He died on 21 July 1989 in a Dallas hospital. He was 73, and the cause was pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs. That year Woodrow Wilson High School had placed him in its Hall of Fame. He was buried at Restland Memorial Park in Dallas, in the Garden of Whispering Waters West. His parents lie in the same cemetery. His flat bronze marker reads "James M. Collins / 1916 - 1989 / God, Family and Country." His wife Dee survived him by more than thirty years; she died in 2021.

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Cite: Heirology, "James Mitchell Collins (1916-1989)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/james-collins-1916-1989-d64b5d.