Walter Paul Collins, devoted husband, poet, insurance agent, dies
"For a number of years, we asked him to come down and live with one of us. He wanted to stay. He would not leave her," said a son,
"He couldn't talk enough about his wife. He just praised her and gave her many accolades. His love for her was pretty much -- I can't explain it," said
The Depression hit the family hard. As a boy,
The day he met
During World War II, she worked at a warehouse in downtown
"Dad told the story every time you met him,"
She was a singer who gave recitals at the
"My mother didn't want anything to do with my father," said another son,
Their marriage in 1952 lasted until her death at 77 from Alzheimer's disease. He bought her a marble gravestone two inches wider than any other in the cemetery,
The couple raised their two sons and a daughter,
"Dad had come out of the house and he had this fierce look in his face. 'Well, you did it. You really did it.'"
"My father was a very intelligent man, but he grew up in a time that he didn't have a lot of opportunity,"
Throughout his life, he wrote poems, and he gathered them in a book published in 2005, "Psalm of a City, Saratoga, and Other Poems." In his poem "Interlude," he begins: "The sky, all thundered out, lies widowed to the sun. Soft rain's fingers stroke a parting gesture on my face. I stand as a child watching the day begin."
In 1988, he and his wife moved to
After his wife died, he planted around their house rosebushes blooming in pink and red; he would pick the rose and place them at his wife's grave.
Services will be held at
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