| Born January 29, 1923, in Baltimore, MD, the son of Edith Mae Collins, Frank Charles Collins graduated from high school in the Baltimore area and joined the Marines to serve in WWII in the Pacific Theater for over two years.
Frank was known to many of his friends as Rip. He served as a Charter Sailing Boat Captain and specialized in trips between Annapolis and the islands of the Bahamas. Upon completion of his sailing career, he lived about five years in St. Croix, finally retiring to Bradenton, Florida. He worked many years there at Tobacco Depot, and regularly joined his friends at the local Ale House. He remained a loyal Orioles fan, and he had a keen interest in baseball at all levels: college, minors, and majors.
Frank Charles Collins died at age 82 on May 22, 2005 at his home in Bradenton, Florida.
His remains are interred at the Maryland Veterans Cemetery in Crownsville.
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Memories of Bus (by Lillian Elaine Collins):
My brother Bus was about almost 2 years younger than me but I was still close to him anyway. He had an unusual childhood, being raised mostly by his grandmother and two of his aunts. His childhood was unlike a lot of kids who had a mother and father there to help
For example, at one point in his life he and a friend decided they wanted to hitchhike to California, and they did - staying out there for a while.
Bus always loved baseball and he was eventually drafted onto an Orioles farm team. But his baseball career was derailed when World War II came along. He enlisted in the Marines and was stationed most of the time on islands in the Pacific, where he had terrible bouts of malaria which took a long time to cure.
He came home after being through all that. He was very, very thin and his hair had turned permanently gray. One of the first things he did after coming home was to buy a convertible that he had saved for. I know somewhere in my picture albums I have pictures of him with his car.
After the war Bus met a young lady named Cathy and they were married shortly thereafter. Both were very young. After a while they had little girl and they lived in Florida for a while. Cathy and my brother had a rather short marriage. In the first place they were both good people, but they were way too young to be married. They were still kids and not completely grown up. After they had a baby things went along okay for a little while and but eventually the marriage ended in divorce. Cathy moved to Florida and Bus would go and see them for a while.
Bus had a variety of jobs. At one point he and a friend had decided they were going to St. John’s Island in the Caribbean and open a shop. They went there and bought a lot of equipment and naturally a big storm came along and wiped out everything. It was a shame because they were both so enthused it sounded like a really good plan for them. But when the weather intervened they just did not have enough money to start again. So after that Bus usually went from job to job found one with a firm called something like the Annapolis Sailing Company. Their main function was to take tourists for sailing lessons for maybe a week or so and live on the boat while doing so. Bus went through a lot of training and reading and testing to qualify for this job, which he loved. When the students were on the boats Bus did all the cooking, and he made sure they sailed within areas where he could stop and get fabulous seafood – including lots and lots and lots of Maryland crabs. Sometimes he had celebrities as students, and that added to the fun of the job.
At another point Bus worked for a multimillionaire who had a fabulous sailing vessel but wanted a Captain to sail it and take care of it and have it wherever he wanted. Bus also liked that job. The boat was fabulous and he worked that yacht for quite a while until the owner remarried and the new wife fired everyone who previously worked for her husband. She wanted people she knew.
Bus moved to Bradenton, Florida, and got a job at a Cigar Shop called Tobacco Depot and made lots of friends he enjoyed very much. He had a nice apartment in a complex that had a swimming pool, and he could walk to work and to nearby stores and to the Ale House where he met with his friends. At this point in his life, bus did have some savings with an investment company, but he lived mostly on Social Security and the money he received from work at Tobacco Depot.
But Bus had health problems. It turned out that he had cancer, and it was at the point that the doctors could not do much for him. He was adamant that he wanted to go home to his apartment, and we took him there, and he was under hospice care. He was so frail.
I moved down to Bradenton and stayed in his apartment to be there with him and for him. Karen was also down regularly, and she was a big help. On the night he died I got into bed with him and stayed in bed with until he passed away.
His friends at the local ale house had a Wake for him. They liked him very much. I was not successful in contacting his wife Cathy during this process, though I tried very hard.
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