Kenneth Poe Funeral Services

October 23, 2025

Patricia Flowe Collins was born in Charlotte North Carolina on November 15, 1934. Pat was a woman of distinction. A true Southern Belle in every sense of the definition, she embodied taste and class in a way that represented her generation and heritage. Extraordinarily well-kept and well-dressed alike, Pat took great pride in her appearance and the way she presented and postured herself in her everyday life. She didn’t even go outside to get the paper without her proverbial “face on” and every hair in place, and she truly was the epitome of style and grace—always appearing at least ten to fifteen years younger than she really was.

First and foremost, Pat’s greatest devotion was to her family. Her love of her two sons was unequaled. The only love that could compare outside of her husband, Fred, and her children and grandchildren, was that of her Labrador Retrievers — Willie, Sunny, Levi, and Josie. Nothing was too good for her boys and her dogs, and they took precedence over everything else in her life. Indeed, people often expressed how they wished they could come back as her dogs in their next lives. Loving came easy for her.

Pat was a Charlotte native and hailed from a family that has been in the Charlotte area for over 200 years. She worked for and carried on her father’s grading business into the 1970s — Flowe Brothers Construction Company and later W. Owen Flowe Construction Company.

A graduate of the “old” Harding High School in Charlotte, she met the man of her dreams and future husband of 64 years, Fred D. Collins Jr., at the Dairy Queen on Central Avenue in the early 1950’s.  Her true wisdom was spread through uncanny analogies and quick wit. The ability to add an anecdote or a brilliant metaphor in her colloquial conversations will be sorely missed.

Pat knew her hometown well and watched the Queen City transform from a sleepy Southern town to a bustling metropolis, but that never changed her small-town pride and sensibilities. You could often find her reminiscing about the “good old days” at Montaldo’s women’s store in downtown Charlotte, among other institutions long gone.