Barbara and Paul Collins began volunteering at Baptist Hospital three years before it opened, selling cement bricks door-to-door for $1 in 1957 to help build the new hospital in Kendall.

That began a life-long love affair with the hospital. Barbara began volunteering in the new hospital in 1961 and has been a volunteer continuously for 46 years. Paul began volunteering when he retired in 1987, after a 47-year career with Eastern Airlines, and only recently has poor health put him on the sidelines.

Every Tuesday and Thursday Barbara Collins drives from her Miami Springs home, arriving about 7 a.m. to her volunteer job in the department of Social Work (now the Care Management Department). For many years she arrived at 5:30 a.m., but recently decided to sleep in.

She stays through lunchtime, working in the office. Over the 46 years, she has given 35,930 hours of volunteer work, equivalent to working as a full-time employee for 17 years.

“Barbara is just amazing!” says Olga Manrique, Director of the Care Management Department, where Collins has volunteered for more than 25 years. “She’s responsible, reliable, efficient, generates ideas for us and it’s as if she’s a paid staff member. She’s very loved and respected by all members of our team. She’s a very special person!”

“On Sept. 19, 1961, I made a lifetime commitment and, so far, I have been able to fulfill this commitment for all of these years,” Collins says. “It was a lifetime commitment to giving back to the community in which I live. I have always received more than is ever given. Volunteering is an important part of my life. I have been blessed by receiving more than I have given.”

She continued her volunteer commitment even while raising three children and holding down a full-time job for 25 years. She has a son and twin daughters, and now three grandchildren. Her son was only 4 when she began volunteering, but she made sure that her jobs gave her at least one day a week to volunteer.

“I made the commitment to volunteer, and I kept it,” she explains.

In addition to her volunteer efforts in the hospital, Collins has been Auxiliary president three times and currently co-chairs the hospitality committee. In 1961, the Auxiliary borrowed $5 from the hospital controller so Collins could create a make-shift gift shop, going room-to-room with a picnic basket full of gum and candy. That was the start of the Baptist Hospital gift shop.

She also was active in the teen volunteer program (Candy Stripers), and ran the program for about 10 years.

When Baptist Hospital replaced the windows in the chapel as a fundraising project in 2005, Barbara and Paul Collins bought two of those. Each new window had a theme — healing, honor, hope, joy, love, peace, praise and wisdom. Barbara and Paul Collins bought “Love” and “Joy.”

Barbara and Paul Collins bought “love” for their love of each other; and “joy” for the joy their children have brought to their lives