Lewis Preston Collins II

Lewis Preston Collins (25 December 1896–20 September 1952) served as lieutenant governor of Virginia from 1946 to 1952. He was usually known as L. Preston Collins or Pat Collins.

Collins was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, and graduated from Washington and Lee University in 1920. He practiced law in Marion, Virginia. He also owned and operated a department store there.

In 1945 Collins narrowly lost the Democratic Party primary to select the candidate for lieutenant governor, but he and residents of Wise County challenged the outcome. They charged that there had been widespread voting irregularities in mail ballots and that the number of votes cast in two districts exceeded the number of people registered to vote four times over. On investigation, it was discovered that, among other irregularities, twenty-five of the twenty-seven poll books in the contested districts had disappeared. A judge disallowed the results in Wise County and declared Collins the winner of the nomination.

Collins easily won the general election in November 1945 and was reelected in 1948. During his second term as lieutenant governor, he suffered a heart attack while he was being introduced as the speaker at the dedication of an elementary school near Austinville in Wythe County, and died.

ource

* John T. Kneebone et al., eds., "Dictionary of Virginia Biography" (Richmond: The Library of Virginia, 1998- ), 3:379-381. ISBN 0-88490-206-4