Rev. Joseph I. Collins This is Me

Education

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1. 1. History of St. Paul Church, Cambridge, Massachusetts

   www.stpaulparish.org/historytx - [Cached]

   Published on: 4/13/2006   Last Visited: 9/5/2007

   A noticeable change came after World War II, when the rectory was filled by a completely new set of assistants: Rev. John E. Kenney (1946-61), Rev. Charles B. Murphy (1947-60), Rev. John J. Sullivan (1946-54), and the eventual successor as pastor, Rev. Joseph I. Collins (1946-71).
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   A graduate of the College of the Holy Cross, Rev. Joseph I. Collins was ordained in 1940. After returning from wartime service as a military chaplain, he was assigned to St. Paul's in 1946 and ministered there for the next twenty-five years, first as an assistant and then as pastor from 1965 to 1971. Fr. Collins was an early supporter of the liturgical movement and participated in many "demonstration Masses," non-sacramental explanations of the ritual. As pastor, he coordinated the local implementation of Vatican II and dealt with other challenges of the time: the closing of the parish school, the sale of the convent in 1968, the needs of the recently founded Choir School, and reconciling various approaches to campus ministry.
   
   Fr. Collins was spiritual director to the Radcliffe students from his arrival, and, with the merger of the Harvard and Radcliffe chaplaincies in 1960, he became a full-time chaplain, assuming responsibility for the men of the university as well. In the academic year 1963-4 the popular priest served as chairman of the United Ministry at Harvard. Three years after he became pastor, he arranged for the first full-time campus ministry staff for Catholics at the university. Exploiting the energy he first displayed as a Holy Cross cheerleader, Fr. Collins was also active in Cambridge civic groups, including the Unity Commission, the Economic Opportunity Commission, the Boy Scouts, and the American Legion. As a member of the Riverside Neighborhood Association, he helped plan the elderly housing complex at 2 Mt. Auburn Street.
   
   In the seventies, migration to the suburbs had changed the parish environs dramatically, university life had been radically altered, and St. Paul's too underwent a number of shifts. In 1971, Fr. Collins was succeeded as pastor by Msgr.

2. 2. Page Title

   www.winninghearts.org/crewpage - [Cached]

   Published on: 12/13/2006   Last Visited: 12/13/2006

   Joseph Collins (Army Colonel Ret.) former under-secretary of defense for counter-insurgency and civil affairs until he accepted a teaching position at the Army War College. He designed the Provincial Reconstruction Team System in Afghanistan, which is now being used in Iraq.

3. 3. Cold War International History Project's Cold War Files

   www.coldwarfiles.org/index.cfm - [Cached]

   Published on: 4/22/2008   Last Visited: 4/22/2008

   Cold War Files: All Units: People: Joseph Lawton Collins
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   Joseph Lawton Collins
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   Born in New Orleans, Louisiania, May 1, 1896, Collins graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1917, but missed combat in World War I.
   
   Following two stateside assignments, he went to Germany in 1919, as part of the occupation forces. Two years later, he returned to West Point, where he served as a chemistry instructor for four years. In the next dozen years, he was a student or a teacher in various service schools before going to the Philippine Islands. In 1936, he attended the Army Industrial College and Army War College, after which he joined the faculty of the latter. Although the short, stocky, good-looking Collins was always a well- organized, articulate individual with great interpersonal skills, he was, on the eve of World War II, considered a good, but by no means extraordinary, officer.
   
   World War II saw Collins' fortune rise quickly. In 1942, he became commanding general of the 25th Infantry Division, and in January 1943, he led that unit as it drove the Japanese off Guadalcanal. It was at that time that he earned the nickname, "Lightning Joe." Next it was on to New Georgia where his earlier success was repeated. In December 1943, he was given command of the VII Corps, which he led onto Utah Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and then across Europe until it joined with Soviet forces at the Elbe River in April 1945.
   
   Several postwar assignments in Washington, D.C. were followed by an appointment as deputy chief of staff in 1947, vice chief of staff in 1948, and after receiving his fourth star, chief of staff of the Army on August 16, 1949-a position he held throughout the Korean War.
   
   Prior to the North Korean attack, Collins joined the other chiefs in the assessment that Korea was not of strategic importance to the U.S. and therefore should not, in the event of an attack, be defended by U.S. forces. On June 30, after a telecommunications conference with General Douglas MacArthur in Japan, Collins came to the conclusion that U.S. ground forces should be committed to battle.
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   While the JCS was responsible for proposing policy and implementing the commander in chief's orders, the operations in Korea were predominantly those of the Army; thus Collins became the primary planner, coordinator, and implementer of military action. Consequently, at the JCS meetings during the war, Collins generally took the lead.
   
   Early in the conflict, much of Collins' time was spent setting up the unified U.N. Command and establishing a U.N. fighting force.
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   Several weeks into the war, MacArthur informed Collins of his planned invasion at Inchon.
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   From the beginning, Collins opposed the move, and while he remained skeptical, he ultimately agreed to the action out of a firm conviction that such decisions should be those of the theater commander.
   
   As the conflict turned into a stalemate in 1951 and 1952, Collins, who was accustomed to the no-holds-barred combat of World War II, grew increasingly frustrated, and thus he supported the use of nuclear weapons to bring the war to an end in the spring of 1953.
   
   In the last two years of his service in Korea, he successfully saw that manpower needs were met, that racial integration of units became a reality, that troops were adequately trained and supplied, and that Congress provided the funds needed by the Army to carry on the fighting. The latter became increasingly difficult as public support for the conflict waned.
   
   On August 15, 1953, less than three weeks after the Armistice, Collins concluded his service as chief of staff. He subsequently served as the U.S. representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Military Committee and as special envoy to South Vietnam before retiring in 1956. In later years, he always maintained that Korea was a victory for the U.S. because the purpose had been to halt communist aggression and that had been accomplished. He remained in Washington, D.C. until his death on September 12, 1987.