Longtime teacher of at-risk kids, Collins dies at 72

Friday, March 2, 2001 | 10:01 a.m.

Marie Collins grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., amid a melting pot of ethnic diversity, where she developed a giving and accepting philosophy of life that would mold her into one of Las Vegas' premier elementary school teachers of the last quarter century.

During her 30-year teaching career for the Clark County School District, Collins worked at at-risk schools that were so poor she spent untold hundreds of dollars of her salary to provide supplies for some of her more than 1,000 ethnically diverse students.

Marie Voisin Collins, who graduated from UNLV at age 42 and went on to teach for 29 years at Robert E. Lake Elementary School, where she earned several nominations for Clark County Teacher of the Year, died Wednesday of cancer at Summerlin Medical Center. She was 72.

Services for the Las Vegas resident of 41 years, who served as a first grade teacher her entire career, will be 4 p.m. Monday at Palm Mortuary, 1600 S. Jones Blvd.

"My mother had a passion for life and loved teaching at Robert E. Lake, a school that was at first middle class and later became impoverished," said Ailene Voisin, a former Las Vegas Sun sports writer of the 1970s who today is a sports columnist for the Sacramento Bee.

"She often said that she was happy to teach the poorer children because she felt she was far more appreciated by them than she would have been by students at a wealthier school."

Collins began her teaching career at one of the poorest schools in the valley, Madison Elementary in predominantly black West Las Vegas.

"Madison was so poor it didn't have textbooks (for some subjects), so Mom got the books and mimeographed the pages so her students would have something," said Collins' son, Chris Voisin, an attorney in San Diego.

Born Marie Horne on Oct. 6, 1928, in Brooklyn, she was the second youngest child of haberdashery owner Wilfred Horne and the former Marie-Lucy Tardieu.

She came to Las Vegas in 1960 and worked as a hostess and bookkeeper for her husband, restaurateur Rupert Collins, who owned the Copper Penny on Fremont Street, the Lake Mead Luncheonette and the Decatur Drug Store luncheonette.

When her husband died in 1967, Collins decided to put herself through college by working as a restaurant hostess at Caesars Palace and later as a waitress at the Desert Inn -- all while raising three children. Her other daughter, Emily Aguero of Henderson, followed in Collins' education footsteps and today is principal at Cartwright Elementary School.

Collins earned a bachelor's degree in education at UNLV in 1971 and later earned a master's degree at the school.

On several occasions, Collins won the Outstanding Robert E. Lake Teacher of the Year Award.

She retired from teaching last year and had planned to begin work for Clark County Family Court's CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) program but became ill. She was diagnosed last month with pancreatic cancer.

In addition to her son and two daughters, Collins is survived by her husband, Lamon Collins of Las Vegas; three stepsons, Chris Collins of Las Vegas, Rod Collins of Lake Tahoe and Randy Collins of Colorado Springs, Colo.; two stepdaughters, Danee Campbell of Henderson and Lamon "Sissy" Collins of Las Vegas; a brother, Bill Horne of Brooklyn; three sisters, Corrine Buthorn of Franklin Square, N.Y., Sister Phyllis Horne of Flushing, N.Y., and Catherine Lindemann of Fort Myers, Fla.