Thomas William Collins' Obituary
Thomas William Collins, former professor of anthropology and chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Memphis, died with his family near him on June 28 in Memphis, Tenn. He was 92.
A son of an immigrant father who drove streetcars across the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City and then worked in a foundry in Muskegon, Mich., Tom leveraged his high school football stardom at Muskegon High School to become the first in his family to go to college. Working summer jobs for the sewer department and meatpacking shops, he never forgot his working-class roots. The working class and economic inequality were themes he returned to repeatedly throughout his academic career. They also formed the basis of his natural ease in relating to people, no matter their background.
Shortly after joining the faculty at the University of Memphis, then Memphis State, in 1972, Tom began ethnographic research on the sanitation workers in Memphis, writing a seminal article on the sanitation workers' strike in 1968, which had tragically brought Martin Luther King, Jr., to Memphis that year. The article caught the attention of former Mayor Henry Loeb III, who had refused to give in to the sanitation workers’ demands in 1968, and he called a meeting with Tom and other university staff in his office. The article lived on in several editions of textbooks and scholarly references.
During his chairmanship from 1978 to 1989, Tom transformed the anthropology department, hiring scholars from across the country and bringing focus to the working class and class conflict, and urban injustice and development in Memphis. His research included school desegregation in the Deep South and economic class divides.
Tom Collins was born on April 11, 1934, in Muskegon, Mich., to James S. Collins and Ruth Geary Collins. James emigrated from Birmingham, England, in 1918; Ruth grew up in Chicago. Tom was the youngest of four children: Shirley Dorkowski, Robert Collins, James Collins, and Ruth Kramer. Robert and James both served in World War II. With toy soldiers, Tom followed his brother Bob’s troop movements on the front line in Europe for four years, marking the beginning of a lifelong fascination in world history and geography.
Tom graduated in 1953 from Muskegon High School, where he played linebacker. His team won the state championship in 1951, and Tom was inducted into the Muskegon Football Hall of Fame in 2005. He played football on a scholarship at the University of Tulsa and transferred to Central Michigan University, graduating with a degree in social science in 1957.
Drafted into the Army in 1957, Tom spent two years stationed in Germany and traveled throughout Europe, including the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona.
After returning to Michigan, Tom taught geography and drove the school bus at Laketon Junior High School in Muskegon. Marcia Ann Reno, of Wayland, Mich., a graduate of Western Michigan University, taught home economics at Laketon. Tom and Marcia met at their first faculty meeting after Labor Day in 1960 and were never apart after that. They were married in Wayland on April 1, 1961.
Tom earned his master’s degree in political science at Western Michigan and taught political science at Joliet Junior College in Joliet, Ill., where his and Marcia’s daughter Sara was born. He earned his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Colorado and was a professor of anthropology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where their son Thomas Jason (T.J.) was born. His dissertation and ethnographic research focused on the Ute Indians of Utah.
Tom read extensively and possessed an extraordinary depth of knowledge of world history. He had an uncanny recall of historical events and dates, geography, and culture across the globe, and brought to them an intellectual perspective and interpretation.
Tom and Marcia traveled throughout Europe and the United States, including a 3-month trip through Portugal, France, and Spain. They took Tai Chi for years, learning the long form. They were avid cultural connoisseurs in Memphis and supporters of the city’s arts, attending classical music concerts, theatre, and art museums. They have been long-time advocates of Shelby Farms and its restoration to an urban park.
After his retirement in 2001, Tom began drawing, painting, and studying art. His paintings reflect his love of the water and boats in Michigan and Long Island, N.Y., the deep green foliage and lakes in Memphis, the architecture and parks of New York City, and his travels with Marcia. They are closely observed pieces of color and humanity.
Tom leaves his wife, Marcia of Memphis; his children, Sara of New York City and T.J. of Dallas, Tex, and their spouses, Robert and Susan; grandson Hunter Thomas Collins and his wife Makenzi of Dallas; sister-in-law Gerry Collins of Muskegon, and many nieces and nephews in Michigan and across the country.
Tom’s love and boundless curiosity in people from all walks of life will live on in the hearts of his family, friends, and those whom he touched throughout his life.
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