City College of SF pioneer John Collins dies

John “Jack” Collins, Ph.D., a gay man who founded the nation’s first Gay and Lesbian Studies Department at the collegiate level at City College of San Francisco, died October 30 after a brief illness. He was 77.

Dr. Collins had lived at The Sequoias retirement community in San Francisco.

According to an obituary on legacy.com, Dr. Collins was the founding chair of the department, which was established in 1989 and provided academic services to hundreds of students at the height of the AIDS epidemic. He retired in 2012. A collection of his papers and catalogs is available for research at the San Francisco Public Library.

In a 2021 article for San Francisco Senior Beat, reporter Jan Robbins wrote that Dr. Collins “found his calling in 1980, when he started teaching ‘Gay Literature’ at City College of San Francisco.”

“I had come out of the closet in 1974 while doing graduate studies in comparative literature at the University of Cambridge,” Dr. Collins said, “and I couldn’t think of anything better than teaching the literature I loved to students I shared so much with.”

It was 1972 when instructor Dan Allen of CCSF’s English Department developed one of the first gay literature courses in the country, according to a history of the department prepared by City College. Allen stepped down a few years later due to illness, and Dr. Collins expanded CCSF’s gay and lesbian studies program to two and then four courses.

“The high enrollment rates and the support of a gay CCSF board member paved the way for the establishment in 1989 of the first Gay and Lesbian Studies Department in the United States,” the department’s history noted. (The name was first changed to Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Studies Department in 1996 and later changed to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender studies in 2006).

That board member was Tim Wolfred. In a phone interview, Wolfred said that Dr. Collins had started work in support of gay and lesbian students before he joined the college board in 1981.

“Jack was firm, but soft-spoken, in his advocacy in opening up the college,” Wolfred told the Bay Area Reporter.

Wolfred, who served on the college board until 1995, said that Dr. Collins brought along other teachers in the English department as he worked to expand the department to include things like HIV resources. In doing so, Dr. Collins made City College “a real home” for LGBTQ students, Wolfred said.

“He was a real leader in the college,” Wolfred said. “There were no openly gay or lesbian administrators when I came on the board.”

Almost three decades later, courses are offered at various CCSF locations throughout the city of San Francisco as well as via online courses available to all California residents, according to the school.

Miki Kupu marveled at Dr. Collins’ accomplishments. Kupu, who identifies as nonbinary and said he is “pronoun-friendly,” first met Dr. Collins and his partner, Martin Cogan, M.D., 42 years ago when the couple visited American Samoa, where Kupu lived at the time.

“We met in the Sadie Thompson Lounge at the Rainmaker Hotel,” Kupu said in a phone interview from Hawaii, where he is staying now. “I was in drag.”

Kupu and Dr. Collins met again seven years later when Kupu moved to San Francisco and ran into Dr. Collins at the Phoenix bar in the Castro neighborhood.

“I’d cut my hair and was a gay boy,” said Kupu.

 
Over the last 35 years the two talked regularly, and Kupu said that he dated Dr. Collins for a while. Cogan had died of AIDS-related complications in 1994.

With Dr. Collins’ help, Kupu studied nursing at City College, graduating from the program in 1993. Kupu became a licensed vocational nurse.

“Jack guided me and showed me the ropes,” Kupu said.

Kupu, 62, has since retired. A long-term AIDS survivor for 25 years, he said he’s now legally blind. His permanent home is in Tacoma, Washington, he said.

Kupu noted Dr. Collins’ historic work at City College.

“I thought it was just the most amazing thing to happen to our community in academia,” said Kupu. “I remember when Jack graduated from Stanford and he chose City College. He told me he wanted to teach underprivileged students and students of color. He was down to earth.”

Kupu said that his family showed Dr. Collins respect. Kupu, in turn, had also met Dr. Collins’ family.

Kupu started UTOPIA SF, which stands for United Territories of Pacific Islands Alliance, during Pride Month in June 1998. The first event was a picnic in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, where Kupu roasted a pig, he recalled. The San Francisco group is now inactive, Kupu said, but chapters are going strong in Washington state, Alaska, and Hawaii.

“Jack witnessed the start of that,” said Kupu.

Dr. Collins also had friendships at The Sequoias. Christopher Leason III, a gay man, befriended Dr. Collins about 10 years ago when Leason moved into the complex. The two usually had lunch twice a week, Leason wrote in an email. But Leason stated that he did not know about Dr. Collins’ groundbreaking work at City College.

“At lunchtime, Jack and I usually discussed books and what we were reading and what we had read in the past,” wrote Leason, who’s 91. “We also shared history in taking care of our partners, who both died of AIDS complications.”

Leason’s partner, Dennis Zaborowski, died in 1996, he wrote.

Another friend of his was Dr. James Campbell, a gay man and retired physician who lives at The Sequoias. In a phone interview, Campbell said Dr. Collins was “a fairly quiet person and easygoing.”

The two were neighbors and attended LGBTQ events that The Sequoias holds monthly. Campbell and Dr. Collins also regularly ate dinner together, where they talked about their lives. Campbell had treated a number of patients living with HIV before he retired in 1998. He also said that he developed HIV risk reduction standards in conjunction with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights.

Early life
Dr. Collins was born on October 13, 1948 and grew up in Mount Kisco, New York, the oldest of eight children. He attended Regis High School in Manhattan and later majored in Medieval studies at Columbia University where he developed a passion for ancient manuscripts. He earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Stanford University and studied at Kings College, Cambridge, enhancing his expertise in Medieval literature and languages, according to the obituary.

Campbell said that Dr. Collins talked about his higher education work.

“His Ph.D. prepared him to teach at City College,” Campbell said.

Dr. Collins authored two unpublished novels and contributed over 100 articles to various publications, including The Sentinel, an old LGBTQ newspaper published in San Francisco. In 2014, he wrote an autobiographical piece, "House of Nightmares," based on journals he kept in the 1990s about caring for Cogan, the obituary stated. Dr. Collins had met Cogan while at Stanford. They traveled extensively throughout the Pacific in the 1980s. Their Haight Ashbury home was noted for murals and designs painted by local artists.

The obituary noted that in addition to Cogan, Dr. Collins was predeceased by his parents, James and Katherine Collins. He is survived by siblings Eddie (Tracy), Mike (Michele), Joanne (Ed), Jimmy (Mindy), Kevin (Andi), Patti, and Peggy; and many nieces, nephews, cousins, and cherished lifelong friends.

Kupu recalled a humorous story when he attended the celebration of life for Dr. Collins’ partner, Cogan.

“In my culture we celebrate life with dance and song. I did a hula,” Kupu said, adding that Dr. Collins’ mother had to go downstairs because she wasn’t used to such activities at a memorial.

“But Jack’s father was loving it,” said Kupu.