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Roy worked 18 months at a Tallahassee grocery, saved $500 and bought a business course at Eastman Business College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He worked two years as a teller for the Exchange Bank in Tallahassee, saved another $500 and bought a law course at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tenn. He finished the one-year course and passed the Florida bar exam with the second highest grade ever scored until then. "I came home," said Roy Collins, "boldly hung out my shingle—and proceeded to starve." Early in 1932 Roy spoke of marriage to dark-eyed Mary Call Darby, but there was a practical difficulty: "My law practice was earning me about $34 a month." So Roy ran for the job of Leon County prosecutor, which paid enough for two.
"I campaigned over every inch of Leon County," he said, "and Mary Call worked almost as hard as I did. The net result was that I wound up getting beat by about 100 votes." Three weeks later, on June 29, 1932, Roy Collins and Mary Call were married.
In the spring of 1934, Lawyer Collins submitted himself once more to the voters of Leon County ("I hated to quit after being beaten"), and won election to the state House of Representatives. He put in six hard-working years in the House and twelve in the Senate. Twice the state capitol press corps voted him the most valuable legislator.
Collins fought to outlaw slot machines, for higher state taxes on dog-track gambling, for higher educational standards and better mosquito control to hold down that old Southern malady, malaria. "I can hardly remember a summer when I wasn't sick with the chills and fever of malaria," Collins said last week. "I used to drink Dr. Groves's tasteless chill tonic by the barrel. I guess it was all that pulled a lot of us through. Well, when I became a legislator I got a chance to work for remedial legislation. Now there are doctors who have practiced in Florida for years and never seen a case of malaria. It's a good feeling to see results like that."
Switching Trains. In 1953 Senator Collins' close friend, Governor Dan Mc-Carty, died in office. Under the state constitution, he was succeeded by the President of the Senate, one Charley Johns, a former railroad conductor, who as a legislator had voted to put the brakes on improving educational standards and against a law to unmask the Ku Klux Klan. Roy Collins ran against Johns for the final unexpired two years of McCarty's term. Collins took his stand against what he called the "muster of the vultures." Despite Johns's lavish promises of road construction projects in key vote areas, Collins beat him 380,323 to 314,198 for the Democratic nomination.
On Jan. 4, 1955 Roy Collins, inaugurated governor of Florida, delivered a speech unusual for its force and clarity. He said: "I want the people of Florida to understand that progress in business, industry and human welfare can only go so far with a ward-heeling, backscratching, self-promoting political system.
"Our progress is sure to run into a dead end if our citizens accept the philosophy that votes can be traded for a road or for a job for an incompetent relative, or for a favor for a friend or for a handout through a state purchase order . . .