Collins, Tom, 1897-

Variant names

Dates:

Birth 1897

Nationality: Americans

Language: English

Biographical notes:

Tom Collins is particularly noted for his time as the Federal Government Camp Manager of the Arvin/ Weedpatch camp in California from 1935-1937 which housed dust bowl agricultural migrants during the great depression. His association with and aid in background research for author John Steinbeck significantly influenced the novel The Grapes of Wrath and led to him being one of the two indidividuals the book was dedicated to. Born out of wedlock, raised in a Catholic orphanage, and drawn at one point toward priesthood, Collins listed his educational background as four years at prep school plus a year at a possible "diploma mill" teachers college from which, when convenient, he claimed to have received a doctorate. During the early 1920s, he worked as supervisor/organizer of public schools at the Guam Naval Station. He also traversed the Amazon jungle with his young ex-socialite wife (the second of three) while fleeing from her family's lawyers. He came to the [federal goverment] Resettlement Administration in 1935 from a job as director and organizer of shelters and labor camps for the Federal Transient Service in San Diego County and Los Angeles. That same year he took over as Camp Manager of the Arvin/ Weedpatch migrant camp. In 1937 Tom Collins left Arvin/Weedpatch "to act as traveling Field Superintendent out of the Regional Office . . . and to be ready on short notice to enter into the organization and management of any new camp, as ordered" a position also known as "Community Manager at Large." After stints at various locations among which were Gridley, Thornton, and Calipatria [camps]... [He was] again a camp manager as of 1940. He resigned from the Farm Security Administration in 1941, having recently received $15,000 as technical director for the Grapes of Wrath movie. Primarily adopted from Archives Vintages for The Grapes of Wrath, Dan Nealand, Prologue Magazine, Winter 2008.