Mary Hassig Collins
October 13, 1949 ~ April 22, 2024
Mary Hassig Collins passed away peacefully at home in Salina on the morning of April 22, 2024 after a brief illness. She was 74 years old.
Mary was born on October 13, 1949 in Birmingham, Alabama. As a child, she readily made friends wherever our military family fetched up, from Maine to Mississippi and even Germany.
During her teens, our family was living in Kansas City, where she graduated from Wyandotte High School. Matriculating first at Wichita State College, she transferred her sophomore year to Kansas State College. There she majored in music, becoming an accomplished flutist. Although she loved the flute and played with local orchestras, she declined to follow her musical muse.
Instead, she pursued a business career largely in advertising sales at newspapers in Kansas City and St. Louis. There she fell in love with and married Ed Gerner, an executive with AAA. They moved to Charlotte, North Carolina where Mary went to work for the telephone company Bell South. Ed passed away in 1997.
A decade or so later, she wed Tim Collins, an Englishman, whom she met while vacationing in Italy. After living in Italy for a few years, they moved to in Charlotte for a number of years, then relocated to Cornwall, England. There, she began to express her artistic self in the medium of fused glass.
The couple returned to the U.S. in 2021, settling in Minneapolis, Kansas, where they lived until Tim’s death just three months later. To be closer to her sister, Mary then moved to Salina, where she soon cultivated a devoted circle of friends. She worked part time at Rogue and B&K Prescription Shop delivering medications.
Mary leaves behind an older brother Lee Hassig, his wife Gerry, and an older sister Margaret Yarnevich, and her husband George—as well as Kay Yarnevich Smith, Steven Yarnevich, and Owen Hassig, her niece and nephews. We remember her for her warmth, incisive wit, and droll sense of humor. We all deeply mourn her passing and will greatly miss her uplifting presence in our lives.
Memorial service will be 2 pm Saturday, April 27, 2024 at Christ Cathedral Episcopal Church, 138 N. 8th St., Salina.
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