Fletcher Collins Jr., 98 (1906 - 2005)
STAUNTON —Fletcher Collins Jr. of The Oaks, 437 East Beverley Street, died Friday (May 6, 2005). He was born Nov. 19, 1906, at Pittsburgh, Pa., to Fletcher Collins Sr. and Elizabeth Sellers Collins. Collins was professor of dramatic arts at Mary Baldwin College for 31 years.

Survivors include his wife, Margaret Brandon James; four sons, Christopher, Brandon, Fletcher III and Francis S.; and a sister, Martha Collins Johnson of Hackettstown, N.J.

A service will be at 2 p.m. Sunday at Trinity Episcopal Church. The family burial service will be at 10 a.m. Monday at Thornrose Cemetery.

A timeless life of letters
By Cindy Corell/staff ccorell@newsleader.com

How many people can you fit in a lifetime? Fletcher Collins Jr. didn't know. He and his wife Margaret just kept adding more, friends say. Collins, a former Mary Baldwin College drama professor and renowned scholar, died Friday morning at 98.

Family and friends say Collins died like he lived: working and surrounded by those he loved.

Cleveland Morris visited Collins at Augusta Medical Center on April 21, bringing several things Collins had requested: a volume of poems by Robert Herrick and a bottle of Wite-Out. He was making corrections to a manuscript he had helped write, a transcription of songs of the 17th century British poet. Once relegated to the page, they stayed there, but Collins wanted to reunite Herricks' words to music.

That Saturday, Collins came home to The Oaks on East Beverley Street, and the family celebrated Fletcher and Margaret's 73rd wedding anniversary. Over the next week, his medical condition worsened.

Morris met Collins four years ago. He'd gone to the Collinses' annual party at their home, The Oaks. The two chatted and immediately, Morris was a part of their lives.

"The essence of Fletcher and Margaret was that there was always room for one more friend," Morris said Friday. "Most of us get to a time when we think we have enough, when we don't need anyone else. For them, it was, 'bring it on.' There was no such thing as too long a buffet line."

Collins came to Mary Baldwin College in 1946. He moved his young family to a Verona farm he named Pennyroyal. He taught theater and, along with his two older boys, Brandon and Kit, he learned to work the farm. That was a far stretch for a man born in Pittsburgh, educated at Yale and who had spent the war years on Long Island, N.Y., but he took to the work and within 10 years, created an outdoor theater there.

Hundreds of students and friends and artists and strangers flocked to Pennyroyal, then to Oak Grove Theater nearby. Conceived as a stage where Mary Baldwin theater students could perform their work, the theater company evolved and for more than 50 years has produced a half-dozen plays a year.

To Collins, words weren't meant to lay around on dusty pages. Scripts were to be acted on stage, lyrics to be set to music. Songs of Appalachia shouldn't disappear with passing generations, either. So Collins recorded folk songs from North Carolina and Virginia. Hundreds of those recordings are preserved in the Library of Congress. He transcribed and translated Troubadour and Trouvere songs from Old French, and a year ago, published a book of Shakespeare songs.

He was confident the Herrick music project will be finished by his collaborator, Lou Dolive, Morris said.

Along the way, the Collinses made room in their lives for many, drawing them into the circle of arts they founded in Staunton.

Tom O'Connell
Professor of film and film adaptation at James Madison University
Met the Collinses nearly 20 years ago

When I met him, I was so impressed, I produced a PBS documentary on Theater Wagon. I was impressed with the role they played in a small town, the sense of community. They sponsored people in their house.

They were able to cultivate and generate a creative culture. They moved here from New York, and they didn't need New York for the culture they wanted. They were able to generate that in themselves and draw others into that. They were able to bring out the best in people. He never stopped living. His most productive years were in his 1990s. He is an enormous inspiration on so many people.

We had wonderful long talks over Scotch. He was a wonderful Chaucer scholar. They really were my surrogate parents. I knew him longer than I knew my own father. He died when I was 18.

Cleveland Morris
Artist, teacher at Stuart Hall, formerly artistic director Delaware Theater Co., Wilmington.
Moved to Staunton four years ago, met the Collinses at annual Twelfth Night party.

I told him we had people we knew in common, he said, 'Oh, I am so glad you came by. We must get together and talk.'

Well, people don't usually mean that, but Fletcher did.

In all honesty, today I lost one of my closest friends. I feel much more privilege than sadness though. He was a wonderful source of knowledge and humor. What I learned from him is that, like all those great artists of life, we must be open to joy, to sunshine, to laughter. He was a non-material man. What he gathered were spiritual gifts. And we will all remember his ongoing romance with Margaret. They were deeply in love up until the end. They were as blissful together as a couple of newlyweds.

Sid Levin
Film editor

He was on the set of "The River" in Tennessee in 1984 when he met Lisa Sloan, an actress, who had studied drama with Collins at Mary Baldwin College. Within weeks, they were married. Also on the set at the time were Fletcher and Margaret Collins. Levin and Sloan have spent much time with the Collinses since.

They were a force that got together an artistic community, even though it was not a geographic community. They have been the emotional and moral compass for a huge number of people. What made them unique was the consistency, the long-term commitment. There was a certain kind of joy, a sense of 'everything is right with the world' when I saw them in their milieu. They are a gift that keeps on giving. I am blessed and saddened by his death.

Dolores Lescure
Former professor at Mary Baldwin College
Long-time president of Woodrow Wilson Birthplace Foundation
Former City Council member

His work for the birthplace was more of the same for Fletcher, he helped everyone who needed help. He was certainly supportive of me when I was president for 21 years. He always had words of wisdom. He was a wonderful man who encouraged and supported every good cause that came along. He was also a brilliant man, a gifted musician, theatrical. He and his wife were guests of the Roosevelts at the White House. He gave so much.

Marion Wine
A neighbor of Pennyroyal Farm, Verona

In 1946, Fletcher and Margaret Collins moved to Pennyroyal Farm, named that after the aromatic mint that grows on the nearby hills. Collins would become a theater professor at Mary Baldwin College, and he later built Oak Grove Theater so his students would have a place to put on plays.

He needed help with farming, and his neighbor, Wine's father, was glad to help.

"He was a very educated man. My father was pretty well educated in farming. They were as different as you could be, but they became the closest of friends. Dad would be down here telling him how to farm and then he (Collins) would have to go teach. He'd be wearing his blue jeans, and then in a few minutes he'd come out of the house like he'd been polished.

"We lost a good buddy today."

Staunton Newsleader. Originally published May 7, 2005