January 4, 2008 — Oklahoma native and Cherokee dancer Bud Collins was one of 38 donors honored on this year’s Donate Life Rose Parade float. The donors were selected from across the nation and were memorialized with floragraphs, pictures composed of flowers and other organic materials.

Collins, a Tulsa native, was the father of Claremore resident Jo Dawn Mathews.

Mathews said she was surprised and happy to learn her father would be memorialized on the float. Shortly after Collins’ death in 2003, his daughters learned he had elected on his drivers license to be an organ donor.

His bone marrow saved the life of a 3-year-old boy, she said.

Mathews said she and her sisters were pleased to know their father’s gift had gone to prolong another life.

It seemed a fitting memorial for the man who had embraced life, living it to the fullest and giving so much to family and friends.

Born in 1933, Collins was multi-talented. He played baseball, was a musician who played bass and piano, a bull rider, welder, sculptor, and jewelry maker who worked with traditional Native American turquoise and silver jewelry.

A Southern Straight dancer, Collins and his daughters spent a lot of time at pow-wows.

“Everybody knew everybody at the pow-wows,” said Mathews. “It was very safe, like one big family.”

Mathews is one of three daughters. She jokes that er daddy really wanted three boys and instead got three girls.

“How do you think I got the name Jo Dawn?” she said.

Her father taught her to hunt and fish. Dancing was the glue that held the family together and tied them to tradition and their ancestors.

“There’s a lot of pride out there dancing with your family,” she said. “He told us to dance for the ones that have passed on. It made it more meaningful.”

Both parents did beadwork and were artistic. Jo’s mother, Betty, also painted scenes on rocks, incorporating the texture of the rocks into part of the pictorial. Collins made detailed metal sculptures using his skills in welding and solder.

He was also an accomplished jewelry maker and kept his daughters well-adorned. The girls grew up wearing elaborate, large pieces of his hand-crafted turquoise and silver jewelry.

Collins danced in a Roach headdress made of deer hair. Mathews said making such a headdress is an intricate process involving tying four strips of the hair together for each strand.

Also a veteran who served during the Korean War, Collins was part of the color guard at the pow wows. A photo taken of him in Native American headdress was selected as part of a design on an Oklahoma mug.

The family found out about the mug by accident when a friend saw it at a gift shop in 2007, four years after Collins’ death.

“It’s the Centennial cup of Oklahoma,” said Mathews. “I bawled like a baby.”

Mathews said her dad was always her hero.

“There was never anything he couldn’t fix,” she said. “There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. He was a really good father. I was always Bud’s kid.”

Mathews said her fathers wit and joking ways made him popular.

“He was very well-liked by everyone,” she said. He had some of his teeth filled with gold and the jokes abounded about those teeth.

Collins taught his daughters to respect life and “eat what you shoot.”

“He was an outdoorsman,” said Mathews. “He put a lot of food on the table.”

Not everything in the freezer was game meant for the table, however.

“Sometimes there were critters,” said Mathews, laughing. She said the freezer might contain creatures Collins sometimes froze prior to taking them to a taxidermist. He had friends who did taxidermy and was interested in learning it for himself.

Of everything he said and did, giving the gift of life through his death was one that impacted Mathews very strongly. Collins’ final gift as an organ donor will be a lasting legacy for his daughters.

“He influenced me to be an organ donor,” said Mathews. “Anyone can help save a life.”



Statistics About Organ And Tissue Donation And Transplantation excerpted from the Life Share of Oklahoma web site.

• 40 Oklahomans died in 2007 waiting for a transplant; nationwide 6,431 Americans died in 2007

• as of March, 590 Oklahomans out of 97,000 Americans were waitling for lifesaving organ transplants

• Every 11 minutes another name is added to the national organ transplant waiting list

• Every day, 18 Americans die waiting for an organ transplant

For more information on organ donation, check out Life Share of Oklahoma online at www.lifeshareoklahoma.org or by calling 1-888-580-5680.