People often referred to Toledo Mayor D. Michael Collins as The Professor and he certainly fit the part. But while he could be pedantic, he was never pretentious. He considered himself a humble public servant, a man of the people. And the people agreed.
“Working people know I am not lofty,” Collins told former Toledo Free Press Editor in Chief Michael S. Miller in 2013 during a walk Downtown. “They know I am one of them.”
Those same workers and hundreds of others lined the streets Feb. 12 to pay their last respects during a funeral procession that passed many of the locations significant to Collins’ work and life, which he spent almost exclusively in Toledo.
I’ll miss Collins’ voice. It somehow had a perfect cadence so that I never felt rushed or behind when taking notes. Quoting him could be frustrating, however, as the middle of his sentences tended to meander so that the end bore only slight relation to the beginning. He’d sometimes say, “There are two reasons I support this,” only to launch into such a convoluted explanation for the first reason that he’d finish his remarks having never gotten to the second reason at all. However, he gave out his home number and always answered the phone; as a journalist, that’s the best I can ask.
Only once did he get irritated with me. Apparently he felt he’d already said everything there was to be said during his remarks at a public forum, so when I approached him afterward for some extra comments, he just handed me his speech. After that, he did it several more times, each time with a glimmer in his eye. The irony, of course, is that possessing his prepared statements was nearly useless, as he never read from them without deviating, paraphrasing or ad-libbing.
The last time I saw him was Jan. 26 at One Government Center during the anniversary memorial for the Toledo firefighter deaths. In the lobby after the ceremony, we were both talking to other people, but he caught my eye and handed me his speech with a wink and a smile. Even though we didn’t speak, I’m glad now I had that one last moment.
One of my personal favorite memories of Collins is from the unveiling of the first of 55 “You Will Do Better in Toledo” road signs on Dec. 17. It was bitterly cold, but he was beaming with pride. It was clear how much he loved this city, for what it was and what it could be.
Collins got only 13 months in office and they were punctuated by seemingly constant challenges, from the firefighter deaths to historic cold and snow, toxic algae, infrastructure concerns and uncertainty over the future of Jeep Wrangler production. At Collins’ Feb. 11 memorial, his chief of Staff Robert Reinbolt noted that rather than deterring him, the challenges he faced seemed to only make him stronger. He was 70 but wasn’t afraid of hard work and long hours.
“We’ve been a government that’s been reactive instead of where I really wanted to be and that was to be more proactive in terms of giving us a different direction,” Collins told me after his State of the City address in December, when he announced plans for the signs (and commented on my Claddagh ring). “I’m hoping in 2015 we can take those dynamic steps to redefine Toledo.”
I wish he’d been given the chance.
It took several days before news of his death actually sunk in.
Intellectually, I could tell the outlook was grim after his Feb. 1 cardiac arrest — minutes without oxygen, a cardiologist gravely pronouncing his condition “very critical” and unable to predict the likelihood of recovery, updates from the city each day reporting no change. But in my heart, it didn’t seem possible he wouldn’t recover. Perhaps not well enough to continue as mayor, but at least enough to embark on a new challenge: a long recovery process and frustrating forced retirement.
But it was not to be.
In Collins’ last public comments, addressing the pending Level 3 snow emergency an hour before his cardiac arrest, he characteristically urged Toledoans to help one another: “This is a time a community comes together and defines itself as it relates to its character. We’ll get through this together.”
He campaigned under the slogan “Collins Cares,” and proved it was true by the time he took to talk to people, by the personal details he noticed and remembered, by the hours he spent poring over city budgets, by the time he took to study issues he wasn’t familiar with, by the small businesses he made a point of supporting, by the myriad community gatherings he attended.
Godspeed, mayor. Thanks for your service.
