40 FEBRUARY 2015 MARIN
Both of your parents were very active on
social and civil rights fronts in Marin. How
did that influence your development? My
mother helped to start what is now called
Lifehouse in 1954. And that, in terms of a huge
narrative in my life, probably shaped me as
an adult more than anything else. It was the
journey of my parents, being the parents of a
developmentally disabled child who was born
in 1951, that they had to discover and create
a system of care for people with developmen-
tal disabilities. When my brother Craig was
born, there was nothing. It was with the help
of my mother and other women, largely, that
the Lanterman Act was passed and a regional
system in the state of California was put into
place. When Craig died a few years ago, the
Marin Independent Journal, in its last edition
of the year, named the most important people
who had died in Marin County and my brother
was one of them. He was one of the children
than 42,000 children a year in Marin, San
Francisco and San Mateo counties.
How did growing up in Marin when you did
help to shape and prepare you for adulthood? Our family moved to Marin in 1951.
I was just entering kindergarten. We were
the only African-American family in Mill
Valley — other than in Marin City, there
were, basically, no other black people in
Marin County. That was the time, those
were the conditions. The context of that
really shaped a lot of the way that I looked
at the world. Because I was, as a kid, in
an environment that was alternately very
welcoming but also, in other ways, very
questioning and hands-off. I think that
you learn to develop a sense of independence but also it forces you by nature to
learn how to engage with people one person at a time.
GROWING UP AS a kid in Marin is often an insular experience — there is not a lot of the cultural diversity that is common across the bay in San Francisco or
Oakland. As a child, Charles Collins moved
to Mill Valley with his family in the 1950s.
His father, Daniel Collins, was a professor
at UCSF’s School of Dentistry. His mother,
DeReath Curtis James, helped to create
Marin Aid to Retarded Children, now known
as Lifehouse. At the time, the Collinses were
the only African-American family living in
Mill Valley. After graduating from Tamalpais
High School in 1965, Collins received a
B. A. from Williams College, an M.S. from
MIT and his J.D. degree from Harvard Law
School. For the past decade, Collins has
been president and CEO of the YMCA of San
Francisco. Now his life is filled with diversity,
as he heads an organization that serves more
Charles
Collins
YMCA chief draws on his unique
upbringing to give kids all over the Bay
Area the chance to grow and thrive.
BY MARC HERSHON • PHOTOS BY TIM PORTER
Collins at Point Bonita YMCA
