Gayle Collins of Kalispell, Montana
During her years of teaching, Gayle created individualized study packets for students wishing to explore the legal and medical secretarial fields, coordinated the high school yearbook and newspaper staffs, developed the business curriculum for students going into business fields at the post-secondary level, and organized functions for students and parents. She returned to Kalispell in 1983 after teaching several years to marry Randy Collins, a “transplant” from Portland, Oregon. Randy likes to tell people that “she quit teaching, got married, and became a ‘bum’”. As a stay-at-home parent, Gayle was involved in many school and community volunteer projects such as shelving books in the school library, producing elementary school yearbooks, organizing and running the Kalispell TFAP location working with 75+volunteers, merit badge counselor for the Boy Scouts, and working as an election judge. She is currently the chief election judge for her home precinct. At various times throughout the past years, Gayle has been involved in many aspects of the church, locally and at the presbytery level. She has worked in the education, Worship, and personnel fields having developed a children’s newsletter, helped develop a personnel handbook, and created and produced Advent and Lenten devotionals. Her term as clerk of the session at Kalispell included beginning to organize and archive the church’s historical records. For the presbytery she served on an administrative commission as an elder and as its clerk, as well as six years on presbytery’s Council, three of them as moderator. Gayle has also served within the scope of Presbyterian Women. As secretary of Presbyterian Women of the Presbytery of Glacier, she worked closely with the “PWP” moderator to develop and produce the semi-annual Glacier Greetings newsletter. Currently she is serving as historian for the Kalispell PW organization. Does she have time for hobbies? Of course she does!! Her free time is spent wondering what Kerra, her daughter, is “up to” at UM - Missoula; needlework projects of all kinds; and family history research. She has completed a book on her paternal grandfather’s family which meant she learned to read Norwegian, is close to completing a book on her paternal grandmother (Norwegian AND Swedish), with her maternal grandparents in mid-research – thank goodness the Scottish and Australian records are in English! She also maintains two websites for family researchers seeking information in Flathead and Lincoln counties, Flathead County MTGenWeb and Lincoln County MTGenWeb. It does make one wonder, doesn’t it, what would happen if her hands became idle? |
Through the years, Gayle Collins hasn’t strayed too far from her native Flathead Valley. She graduated from the U of M – Missoula in 1976 with a BA in secondary education specializing in business education, history, and political science. Her graduate work has been done through MSU – Bozeman and UM – Missoula in curriculum development and sex equity/bias in the classroom.