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K. Parke Collins, president and CEO of Collins and Associates Corp., told his son, R. Parke Collins II, that the family business as a "tough business," and if he were entertaining any ideas about coming into the business, he should "be prepared to meet the challenges." But he also told him with equal fervor and frankness, "If you see something else that you want to do, be my guest."
The senior Collins knows from whence he speaks, having signed on in 1956 with his family's insurance business, a business his father started in 1937 and that his mother took over in 1941 when his father became ill and died. But he didn't arrive on the family-business doorstep empty-handed. After graduation from the School of Economics at Michigan State University and an extensive insurance training program, Collins borrowed money from the bank and purchased an insurance agency on his own.
He did not run the agency on his own, however. Mother and son became partners, merging the Nina N. Collins Agency with her son's chattel agency, an arrangement that spurred rapid growth along with the younger Collins' concentration on commercial accounts.
The two worked together until his mother's retirement a decade later, and Collins still expresses astonishment that his mother was able to step into his father's shoes and run the business as effectively and for as long as she did while raising three children. "It was very unusual, in those days, for a woman to be a business owner and operator," Collins recalled. "She was, I guess, a very stubborn woman and just wouldn't quit. Perhaps, I've inherited some of that, because I probably should have quit years ago," he joked.
Following his mother's retirement, Collins said, "I formed a partnership shortly after that with another individual and then we formed a corporation with a couple other individuals. We became a larger agency, an agency that wore a lot of hats." He was president of that agency in 1972...