Patricia “Pat” Collins, a civic-minded matriarch who raised six children, including Republican Sen. Susan Collins, and led a life of public service, died Tuesday at age 96, the senator announced.<\/p>\n
Pat Collins was raised in Port Jervis, New York<\/a>, after coming to the United States as a girl from Colombia, and she put down roots in Maine after attending the University of Maine, marrying husband Donald in 1948, starting a family and becoming the first woman to be elected mayor in Caribou and a chair of the University of Maine System Board of Trustees.<\/p>\n SUSAN COLLINS, KEY SENATE GOP MODERATE, WON’T BACK TRUMP IN 2024<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n She also was an artist who painted watercolor portraits of her husband’s colleagues in the Maine Senate<\/a>, earned an art degree from the University of Maine at Presque Isle and was “a fabulous cook who published two cookbooks,” the senator said.<\/p>\n Democratic Gov. Janet Mills<\/a> called Pat Collins “a friend and trailblazer” who loved her state, “especially her cherished Aroostook County.”<\/p>\n “Pat will be remembered for her extraordinary character, marked by grace and integrity. She leaves behind a deep legacy of service,” Mills wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n Pat Collins found time for many other public service-minded posts while raising her family. She served on the advisory committee of the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, as a court-appointed special advocate for children and chair of the Catholic Charities Maine Board of Directors and the Catholic Foundation of Maine Board of Trustees.<\/p>\n She was married for 70 years to her husband, who died in 2018. Surviving are five other children in addition to the senator, 11 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Patricia “Pat” Collins, a civic-minded matriarch who raised six children, including Republican Sen. Susan Collins, and led a life of public service, died Tuesday at age 96, the senator announced. Pat Collins was raised in Port Jervis, New York, after coming to the United States as a girl from Colombia, and she put down roots … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}