United States Sen. Susan M. Collins is proud of her Aroostook County roots. Born in Caribou December 1952, one of six children, Susan is the daughter of Donald and Patricia Collins. Her brothers, Sam and Gregg Collins, still run the family’s fifth-generation lumber business, S.W. Collins Company.
Aroostook Republican file photo
1971: Charles “Chuck” Hackett delivers a round scolding to Susan Collins as he accuses her of having taken a book in angry scene III of “The Glass Menagerie.” The high schoolers perpared for their performance on June 1 and 2 of that year.
Sen. Collins is a 1971 graduate of Caribou High School, where she was salutatorian. Other than picking potatoes and babysitting, Susan’s first job was reading to children during story hour at the Caribou Public Library, and she credits the library and her parents with her love of reading and of public service. “I was fortunate to have been born into a family with a strong tradition of public service. My parents were both involved in state and local government and they taught me the value of public service,” stated Sen. Collins. Susan’s mother, Pat, has served on Caribou’s school board and city council, and as mayor of Caribou. Her father, Don, also a former Caribou mayor, is a World War II veteran and served for several years in the Maine House of Representatives and the Maine State Senate.
When Susan was a senior at Caribou High School, she participated in the William Randolph Hearst Foundation Senate Youth Program where she met Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who has been an inspiration to her throughout her life. Sen. Collins remembers, “Senator Smith was a great political leader from our state and I was thrilled to meet her. We talked for nearly two hours, discussing many important issues and she answered my many questions. What I remember most was her telling me to always stand tall for what I believed. From that time, she has been my role model and my inspiration as I serve the people of Maine. I don’t think I would have become a U.S. Senator if it hadn’t been for that meeting.”
Sen. Collins graduated from St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, in 1976, where she was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa national academic society. As a college student, she was inspired by a young man from Bangor named Bill Cohen who walked throughout Maine’s huge 2nd Congressional District – more than 600 miles – to win election to the U.S. House of Representatives. Susan volunteered for his campaign and later worked on his staff in Washington, both when he served in the House and later, in the Senate, for nearly 12 years.
The senator then served in Maine government for five years as the commissioner of Professional and Financial Regulation in the cabinet of Gov. John McKernan and also served as the head of the U.S. Small Business Administration for New England.
In 1994, Susan ran her first campaign for public office. She won a grueling eight-way Republican primary and was the first woman in Maine history to win a major-party nomination for governor. After months of campaigning tirelessly all over the state, Susan lost that fall’s general election. But she remained committed to public service and went on to become the founding director of the Center for Family Business at Husson College in Bangor.
When Senator Cohen announced he would not seek reelection in 1996, Susan’s phone at Husson began ringing off the hook with calls from supporters who urged her to run for the Senate. In November 1996, Maine voters first elected Susan Collins to represent them in the United States Senate – making her only the 15th woman in history to be elected to the Senate in her own right.
Sen. Collins was reelected in 2002 and again in 2008, when she carried every county in the state. She has earned a national reputation as a thoughtful, effective legislator, who works across party lines to seek consensus on our nation’s most important issues. She is renowned for never having missed a single vote during more than 12 years of service in the Senate.
In the Senate, Sen. Collins is the ranking member and former chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Department of Homeland Security and is the Senate’s chief oversight committee. She also serves on both the powerful Senate Appropriations and Armed Services committees, and is a member of the Special Committee on Aging. Previously, she served for six years on the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.