Constance Collins Cain

November 12, 2020

Constance Sullivan Collins Cain,96, beloved wife of James Francis Collins (1919-1974), and George Harvey Cain (1919-2012), mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister and aunt, died November 12 at the age of 96 in Connecticut. She lived a life as rich and varied as the 10 decades of American history she took part in and helped shape. Born on January 29, 1924 in Holyoke, MA, the second of nine children of George and Elizabeth (O’Neill) Sullivan, she was raised during the Great Depression in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and West Springfield, Massachusetts, where her parents founded the Sullivan Paper Company. In 1944, Constance left for Washington, D.C. to serve as a Petty Officer First Class in the W.A.V.E.S (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). She intentionally failed the secretary’s exam to get a more interesting job, a ploy that worked: she drafted maps for pilots serving in the Pacific Arena. She always remained a proud veteran and often marched in Memorial Day parades and hung an American flag outside her front door every day. When the war ended in 1946, Constance used the G.I. bill to pay for her education at Sargent College (now part of Boston University) where she earned a BS in Physical Therapy and Physical Education. She met the love of her life, Jim Collins, a World War II veteran (Captain, Army Air Force), who was attending Harvard Law School. They lived in the same building in Cambridge where he was clearly smitten by the petite, green-eyed, auburn-haired “Sullivan girl.” They wed in West Springfield on January 22, 1949. The best years of her life were by her husband’s side as they built a political career together in Connecticut. Born and raised in Hartford, Jim ran as a Republican candidate for Congress in Hartford County in 1962 and 1964. A tremendous fund-raiser and campaigner for both her husband and for the Republican Party, Constance served as President of the Republican Women’s Association of Connecticut and as an Alternate Delegate to the Republican Convention in 1964 and again in 1968. Throughout that decade she also served as a beloved and much respected kindergarten teacher at Noah Webster School in Hartford. In 1973, Governor Thomas Meskill appointed Jim Collins to a judgeship, a fitting reward for all the years of community service both Constance and Jim had contributed as a couple for decades in the state. Jim loved the bench, but died of cancer in 1975, age 56, a devastating loss to his wife and children. In her mind’s eye and heart, he never truly left her. Constance found a way to sustain her family, with her two youngest daughters, Patricia and Mary, still teenagers in high school. All of her life she provided endless amounts of emotional and financial support to her children, their children and her great grandchildren, a level of giving that fundamentally improved the lives of all them. Devoted to family and friends to the last, in the halls of political power in the 1960s but never tainted by it, athletic and irreverent when women were told to be neither, Constance Sullivan Collins Cain lived a full, generous, spirited life. She leaves behind her four children, James Barry Collins (Arlington, VA), Elizabeth Frances Collins (West Hartford, CT), Patricia Alice Collins (McLean, VA) and Mary Ellen Collins (West Hartford, CT) and her husband Scott Franklin, as well as seven grandchildren, Domenic Scarano of Apex, NC, Jimmy Scarano of Arlington, VA, Kathleen Limbaugh of Virginia Beach, VA, Anna Collins of Virginia Beach, VA, Liz Foley of College Park, MD, Margaret Collins of Reston, VA, and Donald Collins of Los Angeles, CA. She leaves four great-grandchildren: London Collins, Bryn Foley, and Ryan and Claire Scarano. She outlived her sisters Shirley and Sylvia and brothers Robert, Terry, David; her brothers Richard, Tommy, and Roger survive her. She will be buried beside her beloved Jim, and down the hill from her second husband George Cain, in Fairview Cemetery in West Hartford, CT. Due to COVID restrictions the family will have a private funeral. Online expressions of sympathy may be made at www.molloyfuneralhome.com