Donald A. Collins

Donald “Don” Collins, teacher, avid reader, animal lover, runner, and baseball fan, peacefully passed away from natural causes May 6, 2014, at his home in East Moriches. He was in his 80th year. 

He was born in Brooklyn May 24, 1934, to Mary D. and Patrick Collins and moved to Mastic Beach as a boy. Don attended St. John the Evangelist Elementary School and Center Moriches High School, graduating in 1951. Don received a bachelor’s degree from Queens College in 1955, and later received his master’s degree from Dowling College.

Don was an ardent student and teacher of history. He taught in the William Floyd School District from 1956 to 1989 and later served as an adjunct professor of history at Suffolk Community College in Riverhead. During the 1960s, he spent summers working at Smith Point Beach and Cupsogue Beach as an ocean lifeguard, and worked for many years as a real estate agent at Moriches Bay Realty.

Don was a devoted baseball fan — both of the sport in general and of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Mets specifically — and spent time as a baseball player, a coach, and an umpire. He was a voracious reader who read every New York newspaper, every day.

He was predeceased by his wife, Theresa Bohlinger-Collins, his sister, Grace Joan Collins-Cooney, and by his infant daughter, Judith Ann, in 1961. He is loved and remembered by his children Diane Hatton White (Michael), Karen Collins-Nelson (Daniel) and David Collins (Pamela), their mother, Dolores Collins, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren — Ben, Sarah, Sean (Laura), Kevin, Renée, Lydia, Stevin, Leila and Anna — loving nieces and nephews, and the many students that he taught from the late 1950s through the 1990s.

Special thanks and appreciation are given to his wonderful companions and caregivers who assisted him over the last two years of his life: Jill, Greg, Patricia, Arlene and Christine.

The family received visitors May 10 and 11 at Sinnickson’s Moriches Funeral Home. A funeral Mass took place May 12 at St. John the Evangelist Church in Center Moriches. Interment was at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, also in Center Moriches.

Memorial donations may be made in Don’s name to the Animal Rescue Fund (ARF) of the Hamptons at P.O. Box 901, Wainscott, NY 11975.

This is a paid notice.