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Hometown Living At Its Best 83
taking thirty-six hours of training. That was over forty years ago. On
March 22, 2017, the Georgia House of Representatives passed House
Resolution 674 “Recognizing and Commending Margaret ‘Nanny’ Collins”
for her service to foster children in Georgia. No one knows just how many
children she has provided with a home and, most importantly, a heart full
of love.
In 1999, Margaret and J. B. adopted two young (foster) boys in
their care, Junior and D.J. The brothers were both legally blind. Until
they graduated from high school, Margaret drove them to Macon at the
beginning of every week, so they could go to a school for the blind and
picked them up again each Friday.
Margaret has a distant memory of her diagnosis with breast cancer
followed by a mastectomy that same year, but it is only a memory in the
shadows. On July 4th, 1999, Margaret and J. B.’s three-year-old grandson
Jonathon drowned. The loss was devastating for all. A few months later,
J. B. suffered a major heart attack from which he never fully recovered.
He passed away on March 13, 2000, at the age of sixty-six. A few months
after Margaret lost her husband, she had open heart surgery to remove
blockages.
Now left with the two young boys that she and her husband had
adopted to raise on her own, Margaret said, “I don’t know what I would
have done without them. They would get out in the yard with me and help
pull weeds. Anything I asked them to do or to learn, they would try.”
Margaret
continued to pour
her life into her
foster children for
the next fifteen
years alone. She
was eighty-yearsold
when her
last two foster
children, a sixyear
old boy and
thirteen-year-old
girl, were adopted
by family members
in Missouri. But
being eighty-yearsold
did not seem
Generations of love
In addition to the many children she has fostered,
grandchildren creating many generations of family.
reason enough to
stop working as a bus
monitor for Vidalia
City Schools where
she helped care for
handicapped and mentally challenged bus riders.
When the neurologist told Margaret’s children that the radiologist felt
certain the findings on the MRI was a glioblastoma brain tumor, they were
in shock. “He wanted to send her immediately to Savannah for a biopsy,
but it was the end of the week. She had to wait through the weekend,”
said Debra.
On Sunday morning, Margaret got ready for church. They were late,
and the service had already started. “My sister Cindy was helping her get
into the church. She opened the doors, and they had just started down
the aisle when the Pastor said, ‘Cindy, can you get Margaret up here? We
would like to pray for her,’” said Debra.
As Margaret was walking next to her daughter, she said, “I remember
closing my eyes for just a second.” In the next second, what looked like a
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