A lot of people don't like to hear me say it. He never finished high school, but he reads law textbooks for fun and has become famous as a litigant, commanding a staff of in-house attorneys to haul rivals into court. And Collins is a Southern Baptist who gives thousands of dollars to the same church that condemns his line of work. In the early 1990s, Jim Thomason, Collins' former pastor at Overbrook Baptist in Greenville, shared with Collins the pain of two gambling addicts he had counseled. We're not holding a gun to anyone's head.
People are weak.
Collins grew up weak. An only child, he lived for several years in a Salvation Army orphanage in Greenville after his mother died. At 13, he was diagnosed with polio and a doctor said he'd be crippled. But, miraculously, he recovered and took up barefoot water skiing as a hobby. Ever since he can remember, he worked in the amusement business, starting out by collecting coins for his father's jukebox company.