James Lawton Collins

James Lawton Collins (December 10, 1882 – June 30, 1963) was a major general of the U.S. Army who served in World War I and World War II, and was the father of Apollo 11 astronaut Maj. Gen. Michael Collins, USAF Reserve (ret.), and Brigadier General James Lawton Collins Jr. His brother, General J. Lawton Collins, served as Army Chief of Staff during the Korean War. Biography Family and early life Collins was born into a large Irish Catholic family in Algiers, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. His father, Jeremiah Bernard Collins, had left Dunmanway, County Cork in Ireland as a young boy in the early 1860s to join the rest of the family in Cincinnati, Ohio. Family legend has it he served as a drummer boy in the Civil War and, at age 16, helped to drive a herd of horses into Texas to replace the cavalry mounts which had been lost to the war. He made his way to New Orleans, where he worked for James Lawton, a grocer.