'Patsy' Collins, 1920-2003: Philanthropist leaves quite a legacy

Priscilla "Patsy" Collins' style was as unassuming as her nickname. She got things done in Seattle, the Northwest and around the world by quietly, tenaciously forging the word "citizenship" into an action verb.

International interests

A funny, sometimes flinty woman with a penetrating gaze and a ready giggle, Collins got a kick out of being described as having "Marion the Librarian" looks that caused some male business adversaries to underestimate her at their peril.

Four years older than her dramatic, flamenco-dancing sister, Harriet, and a year younger than their brother, Stimson Bullitt, Collins started life as a child of timber and real estate wealth. But, her father, A. Scott Bullitt, died when Collins was just 11 years old, during The Great Depression, and she watched her mother struggle for a time to support the family with only the skills of a society hostess.

Collins also saw her mother get rapidly up to speed, turning a failing radio station in the Smith Tower into a broadcasting powerhouse with TV stations in four states.

A towering figure capable of casting an obscuring shadow, Dorothy Bullitt ran King Broadcasting until her death in 1989 at the age of 97. "She loved making money. I love giving money away," Collins often said.

Broadcasting was her mother's passion while Collins and her siblings had their own aims. Harriet built the Sleeping Lady retreat, concert and convention center near Leavenworth, preserving old-growth forest in the process. And Stimson developed the Harbor Steps-First Avenue waterfront link.

Collins' personal pursuits included extensive study in Europe and the Middle East, where she nourished her lifelong appetite for world affairs.

After graduating from St. Nicholas School and then Vassar College, Collins worked for the Navy and, late in World War II, she went overseas as a staff member in the Red Cross assigned to the Army in the occupying forces of the Philippines and Japan.

"Decades before the rest of us thought about it, Patsy observed that there was a great unrest and anti-American aggressiveness building in Islamic countries that we ought to be paying attention to," said former KING President Ancil Payne.

KING News anchor Jean Enersen also recalls Collins as being on "the cutting edge" of international events including U.S. relations with the Arab world, China and Cuba. "She was very much a part of my education," Enersen said.

A media leader

When she assumed her role at KING, Collins took to the challenges and competitiveness that came with it.

"On her first day as chair, she was called down to the lobby on the old Aurora side of the station," former KING-TV political reporter and ex-Seattle Mayor Charles Royer recalls.

The visitor was there to serve a subpoena on her in a lawsuit filed against KING over an investigative series Royer and reporter Carol Lewis had done on then-Insurance Commissioner Karl Herrmann.

Later that day Collins told Royer, "This is going to be a lot more fun than I thought!"

Collins was supportive of the muscular, punch-throwing journalism flexed by KING-TV in the 1960s and '70s and applauded her brother's early (1966) on-air editorial stance against the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam. But, like her mother, she never forgot she was running a business.

Collins and her sister shocked Seattle in the early 1990s by holding their noses and airing a "hot talk" show hosted by Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy. He consistently used his radio pulpit to bash everything the Bullitt sisters seemed to stand for as "tree-hugging, owl smooching, pro-gay, pro-choice, anti-war, anti-gun, enviro-feminist liberals."

Although classical music station KING-FM was making money, it wasn't enough to keep KING-AM talk radio afloat -- particularly not when pitted against KVI's then wildly popular Rush Limbaugh show. "Only 4 percent of our air time is Gordon Liddy," she said at the time. "Ninety-six percent is beautiful music and people we can be proud of. Please forgive us the 4 percent and let us pay the bills."

But when Liddy failed to draw ratings, Collins gleefully called newspaper friends to chirp, "He's toast! We're throwing him over the side and feeding him to the fishes -- although I don't think my friends at People for Puget Sound will like that much."

Making a difference

The Puget Sound group was just one of several Collins had helped jump-start.

In 1991, KING-TV was sold to the Providence Journal Co., netting an estimated $300 million. A large portion of the profits made it possible for the sisters to give The Bullitt Foundation $100 million in assets.

In 1994, the sisters bought Classic KING-FM from its other shareholders and donated the station to the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera and the Corporate Council for the Arts (now called ArtsFund). The station's profits continue to fund the arts trio.

Money liberated by the sale of KING-TV helped Collins support myriad projects. An $800,000 bequest to the Cascade Conservation Partnership acquired 920 acres along the upper Yakima River, sparing at least 200 of those acres from immediate logging and road construction. Another gift to the Loomis Forest rescued crucial wildlife habitat in the Okanogan County corner of the Cascade Range.

Collins aided in the rebirth of Seattle's Town Hall as a site for concerts and speakers. And she recently sent a $100,000 gift to the Central Asia Institute to help build schools in remote villages in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

Collins trained a practical eye on all her projects, large or small, making human need and nature her priorities. But she also enjoyed leveraging the most good from her gifts.

When she got wind that the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center would be moving and developers were lusting after the land then occupied by a First Hill parking lot, Collins bought the lot. Then she turned around and sold it at what she called "a lovely loss" to the Seattle Housing Resources Group, which then built low-income housing on the site.

"Elderly people have to be able to live close to medical centers, on bus lines, near parks and they have to be able to walk to the Bon Marche," Collins reasoned. "And younger low-income people have to be able to live near where they work, not out in Burien. Wealthy people can choose where they live but the elderly and poor don't have that option."

First-hand observation taught Collins that, in her words, "women still take a lot of guff" in the business world. So she aimed several of her small-scale projects at girls of middle-school age, including the 18-day "Patsy Collins Adventure in Leadership" summer camp program, on Orcas Island.

The mother of three sons, Collins claimed not to know much about girls "except for maybe having been one once."

"I'm not a leader," she would tell the campers. "I don't even know any leaders. I just know people who want to get something done or make something happen. And when they look around, lo and behold, other people are following!"

Not one for fanfare

Collins found herself awash in awards and honors in the past few years. Laurels included Seattle's First Citizen award in May 2000, preceded by the Lifetime Dedication to the Arts Award from the Corporate Council for the Arts and the YWCA's Isabel Colman Pierce Community Service Award.

She accepted her accolades with a dismissive wink. In receiving a Seattle Rotary Club award, she congratulated the formerly all-male club for finally deciding it liked women, "particularly rich, little old ladies" like her.

Collins loved music but hated fanfare. In order to make Seattle's historic Stimson-Green home self-sustaining, Collins opened and ran her own catering business from the mansion. But she did not like being catered to.

Although Collins was one of Seattle Opera's two biggest givers (the other being Marion Oliver McCaw), Seattle Opera General Director Speight Jenkins described Collins as "totally free of the baggage of excessive wealth. She demands nothing for what she does except use of intelligence in return."

"Quiet leadership" is the way Enersen described it. "She's done so much for the community that people are not even aware of, both in terms of philanthropy and in leadership training for kids.

"People were always asking her for favors. Her advice was often to tell them to, 'First, thank the lady' you're asking for the things she has already done. So it's time now to thank the lady."

Earlier this month, even as the pain of her illness confined her mostly to bed, she was working to fund and push forward a project to build 83 girls' schools in Afghanistan and Iraq over the next decade. She had donated $240,000 toward that goal.

Two weeks ago, Collins signed three of her books -- "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp," "Snow White" and a Dr. Seuss volume -- for Afghan schoolgirls. Telling a friend it was the last time she would every write anything, she penned:

"To my little dear girls,

"study hard, learn to read and write and be forever free.

"with love and admiration,

"Patsy"

MEMORIAL SERVICE

Priscilla "Patsy" Collins is survived by her sister; brother; sons Jacques of Bainbridge Island, William of Woodway, and Charles of Sedona, Ariz.; and numerous nieces and nephews.

The family has scheduled a memorial service for July 8 at Town Hall at 3 p.m. Donations in her memory may be sent to the Peach Foundation, a small organization she created to support non-profit projects in the Pacific Northwest. The address is 1017 Minor Ave., Apt. 1201, Seattle, WA 98104.

P-I reporter Joel Connelly contributed to this report.

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