Evelyn Collins is 91 years of age, but a visit to her home in rural Jones County would provide no clue of that. To the contrary, it would confirm she is still going strong.
Collins, a widow since 2003, recently visited a healthcare provider in Gray, and a staff member asked her what problems she had.
“She was trying to find something wrong with me,” Collins relayed, “and I said, ‘Well, I feel all right, feeling good when I walked in. Don’t make me feel bad when I walk out.’ And she said, ‘well, people of your age…you have any help at home?’ I replied, ‘not a soul.’” Collins went on to say that her son-in-law Doug Deloach (husband of her daughter, Jackie) somewhat lightheartedly took issue with her efforts.
“I was getting a 50-pound bag of goat feed, and it shifted going down that hill to the barn and fell on my leg, and it hurt it real bad. I was showing it to Jackie, and Doug said, ‘Okay, just keep on. I’m gonna take your wheelbarrow license away from you.’“ The elderly homeowner said that was routine work for her.
“It was loaded down; I just emptied it yesterday. I carried a whole bunch of stuff off in the woods, stuff that I raked out of the pond. I rake out pine straw and leaves and everything, and pick it up with the pitchfork and put it in there and head out.”
Military plans go awry
Collins can claim a unique distinction in her arrival in this world.
“I was the last of 11 children, and I was born in a hospital in Savannah. That was the first time my mother had ever had a baby in a hospital. She always had a midwife.”
Collins’ maiden name was Myers. Her grandfather had been killed while serving as sheriff when her father was five months old, and his wife remarried to a Myers.
Collins grew up in Bulloch County, and she had plans to join the Army when she finished high school.
“I had six brothers, and all of them served. Daddy, World War I, and the older brothers, World War II, and then later Korea, and Afghanistan.”
Previously there had been just 11 grades in the school she attended, but a 12th was added the year she graduated.
“I was going to get out when I was 15 and a half or 16, and I said, ‘Mom, I’m joining the army when school’s out.’ And she said, ‘I’d rather you not go.’ And I said, ‘I’m going to serve like my brothers.’ Then I found out we were going to have the 12th grade, and Mama said, ‘You’re going to graduate.’ So then I didn’t go in the army.”
Evelyn Myers met Jack Collins at a ballgame in Bulloch County when she was 17. She had left home and moved to Savannah, where she landed a job with Southern Bell.
A good friend of Evelyn, Joyce, was dating a guy, and she wanted to get his brother and Evelyn together.
“She said, ‘Evelyn, Jerry has a twin brother named Jack, and he’s looking for a girlfriend,’ and I said, ‘Well, I’m available.’ I never had dated anybody. Daddy wouldn’t let us date.”
She did, though, start seeing Jack, who was working for the railroad and lived a little ways off in Guyton.
“He came riding the Central of Georgia train on Friday night,” Collins recalled, “and when it came in, I’d walk seven blocks to the station to meet him. We would go to a movie, and he’d catch the one going back to Guyton.”
Collins accepted a ride home one day with her new boyfriend and introduced him to her dad. She remembers the conversation. “He said, ‘Boy, where do you work?’ He answered, ‘I work with my daddy with the railroad.’ Daddy said, ‘Come on in, son, come on in.’” She graduated when she was 17, and they married a year later in 1964 in a double wedding ceremony with Jerry and Joyce.
On the road … landing in Jones County
Jack Collins’ work with the railroad put him on the road a lot, and the couple pulled a mobile home everywhere they went. “The first one was like a camper,” Evelyn said, adding that her husband got his dad to co-sign a note to purchase a 10 x 50 to replace it. His dad wanted to be sure that Jack could make the $50-per month note payment.
“And Jack said, ‘Evelyn, can we make $50-a month-payment?’ I said, “I’ll find that $50. Yes, we can make it.’” They bought the mobile home in 1964 and started out with their three children: Jackie, Alfred, and Wilton.
“Jackie was going to start school, and we were heading north. The truck started giving us trouble before we got to Gordon (in Wilkinson County),” Collins said. They made it to Gray and ended up parking temporarily on the farm of George and Frances Thornton.
That temporary stay became a permanent move when the family decided to settle in Jones County. The lived in Bradley and became good friends with the Thorntons.
“Miss Frances and I organized the first Bible School in Bradley (Baptist) in 1965,” Collins said. “We saw a need of the children that lived there. We had 20 children to come to Bible School for a week, and they loved it. We never stopped having it, and it’s still going.”
Collins believes the breakdown of the truck was no accident.
“I think all that was in God’s will,” she declared. “Because we were headed north of here, and his twin brother and wife had already gone. They lived in Chatsworth, and we were gonna go that way too.
“When we got here, I think it was all a God thing for us to break down, and the Lord left us here.”
Rev. Emmett Swinney had been named the pastor of Bradley Baptist shortly after the couple moved to the county and joined the church. Later in life, the minister suffered health problems, and Jack would take him places. He told his wife he didn’t want that to happen to him.
“He said, ‘Evelyn, you know how we love Rev. Swinney, but he’s getting feeble, and I’m afraid if I live that long, you’ll have to take care of me. I hope — if it’s God’s will — that I will leave before I ever have to depend on you take me somewhere like that and have fun with me in a wheelchair.’” Those words would become prophetic later.
‘Going once, going twice…’
Collins has been living in her current home for 32 years now, but the property was bought about 10 years before then. She and Jack had been looking for some land for their sons to possibly build on when they came out of the military, and she heard of an auction of real estate off Highway 18 West. He was out of town working, and she decided to go check it out.
“I had never been to an auction before,” she admitted. “I thought of buying a lot if it didn’t go too high.” She didn’t bid on a lot, but then 10 acres came up.
“Somebody bid, and then somebody else bid, and then I raised my hand, and I think I was a hundred dollars over. The auctioneer said, ‘Sold to that lady right over there.’ It about scared me to death because I had just raised my hand. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it worked out well.”
Jack was surprised and perplexed at what she had done, but a closer look changed his mind.
“When he finally got over the shock of me buying this 10 acres, he came and looked at it, and he said, ‘Creek runs right through there; a water hole in my backyard!’ So he wasn’t mad anymore, and we were able to get it. I just am thankful to the Lord that I have it.”
The couple built on the property and moved there from Bradley in 1994 to be closer to Jackie, who has suffered significant health issues. She has had both heart and liver transplants.
The family brought a caboose with them and enjoyed life there together until 2003, when Jack died suddenly as a result of what Evelyn described as ‘an aneurysm of the back aorta of the heart.’ “It was so sudden; it was just a tragedy. He had just turned 70.”
Collins took solace in his manner of death, however.
“It was his prayer that he not get in bad shape and make me have to take care of him, and he got his prayer answered.”
Collins, who is a charter member of the Veterans Committee in Jones County, has children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren who enjoy her and the property — including the pond with its fish — but, while she is grateful for their love and help, she is more thankful for another source of strength.
“God has been good to me. I just tell the Lord all the time, ‘Lord, you own this place. I live here, but you’re in charge of it, Lord.’ We’ve loved the Lord for a long time, and He’s been good to us.”
