One of the best parts of being the editor of New Mobility is building relationships with all of our readers and contributors. I look forward to the semi-regular emails and phone calls with our diverse crew, and I feel privileged to soak up their insights and wisdom and share them in the print and webpages of New Mobility.

If I had to list the contributors I have enjoyed corresponding with the most, Mike Collins would be very near the top of the list. He was an editor’s dream, equally capable of writing about adaptive driving and accessible vehicles and tackling complex legal and advocacy issues. Every time we talked or emailed, he had interesting story ideas and seemingly had contacts in every field and every locale.

You need a source for a story on airboats? Mike’s got a guy. How about someone knowledgeable in filing ADA claims in Idaho? Mike knows someone.

I met Mike when he was a source for one of the first stories I ever wrote for New Mobility. He told me about a rogue caregiver he’d employed who had rendezvoused with a secret lover in his house when he was on vacation. His advice for hiring caregivers: Avoid “shack up situations.” The anecdote made my story and helped establish Mike as someone I knew I could count on.

As an editor, I always ask writers to show readers what they are writing about instead of telling them. Instead of listing all the examples and reasons why something is true and asking them to believe you, bombard readers with colorful anecdotes, characters and quotes that leave readers no other choice than to believe you.

Mike did this instinctively. He told stories in a way that highlighted exactly what New Mobility was about: living life to its fullest regardless of your ability. I never questioned how he developed this talent but reading his lovely obituary it becomes obvious: Writing that way was natural for him because that’s how he lived his life.

Mike and I only hung out once in person, a few years ago at a shopping mall Chinese restaurant, but we slowly became friends over phone and email. He’d update me on his latest accomplishments and struggles, and I’d do the same.

In the months before COVID, most of his updates focused on fighting insurance for approval of a series of surgeries he hoped would help him get back to living his life the way he wanted. A syrinx in his spinal cord had been slowly robbing him of the precious function he had always maximized.

Thanks to the same tenacity and savvy readers came to expect from him, he finally had everything lined up in the winter of 2020, then the pandemic hit. With hospitals postponing elective surgeries, Mike found himself back in a holding pattern.

That holding pattern came to an end June 14. As a lifelong advocate for the importance of living independently, it is fitting that Mike remained at home and spent his final hours surrounded by his daughters and sisters.

His legacy will live on, not only in the archives of New Mobility, but in the broader disability community to which he was so passionately dedicated and the many lives he personally touched.