We are grateful to the late Dick Collins, legendary AHS teacher, coach, former School Committee member and leading ABC supporter, who died Thursday.
He was one of our program’s stalwart backers from its very beginning, when he spoke on behalf of Town Meeting voters who approved its creation in 1967.
Joseph Smith, AHS ’82, an ABC student from a single-parent family who was on a Collins-coached football team, says on his Facebook page that “for some of us… he was the only father we ever had. We honored and loved him.”
Coach Collins was known as a stern but compassionate mentor for the many ABC students as well as the legions of other students and athletes that he instructed during his 28-year teaching career at AHS.
His strong identification with ABC from its start is clear in comments he made in a 2012 interview: “These young men, as well as the young women who followed, were and are the greatest!
“What a great experience it all has been, and what a tremendous blessing ABC has been to all of us!” he added.
We at A Better Chance say the same of Dick Collins.