LEXINGTON, Ky. — Gov. Martha Layne Collins, the first and only woman to serve as governor of Kentucky, died Saturday, Nov. 1.

She was 88 years old.

Collins was only the third woman in the United States to be elected to a gubernatorial office, defeating Republican Jim Bunning to serve from 1983 to 1987.

She chaired the Democratic National Convention in 1984 and was considered by presidential candidate Walter Mondale as a running mate.

One of Collins’ most enduring achievements was luring Toyota to Georgetown, a move that created thousands of jobs and has had a lasting economic impact on the region.

Collins said in a video shared by the Kentucky Women’s History Project that she “had to convince voters that I not only had good ideas and experience, but that a woman – a woman – could lead the state.”

“I opened a door that will never, ever be closed again,” she said. “No woman running for governor of Kentucky will ever again have to answer the question, ‘Can a woman do this job?’”

How did she get there? Hard work, said Crit Luallen, former lieutenant governor and auditor, who worked for Collins’ campaign and her governor’s office.

“The idea of a woman running for governor was something people couldn’t really wrap their heads around. But she simply outworked everyone,” Luallen said.

Having previously held the statewide elected roles of lieutenant governor and clerk of the court of appeals — neither of which are separately elected offices anymore — Collins was known to Kentucky voters.

Their acquaintance with the governor extended beyond the ballot box, Luallen said, as she barnstormed the state in her official capacities as well as during her gubernatorial race.

In an exit survey conducted at the 1983 polls, a strong majority of Kentucky voters said they had personally met Collins in the year leading up to the election.

“It was like in the ‘80s,” Luallen recalled. “I remember the pollsters being shocked by that, but it was because she was everywhere.

“Nobody could outwork her.”

Massive Toyota deal in Georgetown

The Japanese automotive behemoth’s Georgetown plant, which broke ground in 1986, remains its largest in the world. About 10,000 people work there, and numerous suppliers have cropped up in the surrounding area.

It wasn’t just that Collins happened to be the governor when Toyota came to the state.

Toyota would not be in the state if not for Collins, according to former Kentucky Gov. Paul Patton.

“I mean, what would Kentucky be like if we didn’t have Toyota? I think that had a lot to do with her working with the Japanese and convincing them to do business in Kentucky,” Patton said. “That wasn’t something that just happened. That was Martha Layne Collins.”

Patton added that he tried to emulate Collins when he took the governor’s mansion two terms after her.

Collins said in a 2011 Herald-Leader interview that she began courting Toyota before it ever announced plans to build a plant in North America.

“I always carried a United States map and had the outline of Kentucky in black, so they could see the roads and know the location was appealing,” she said.

When the choice came down to Kentucky or Tennessee, Collins said she tried to wow Toyota executives by serving a fancy meal at the governor’s mansion that included fireworks shooting off behind the Capitol dome, singers from My Old Kentucky Home and baked Alaska with sparklers on top.

“So many people come up to tell me that plant changed their lives,” Collins said in 2011. “I told the company I wanted a good corporate citizen, and they have been such a tremendous contributor to so many things from arts and health care to education and sports.”

Martha Layne Collins’ accomplishments

Collins, a former teacher herself, was also credited with education improvements, including a $300 million reform package that provided raises for teachers.

In 1985, she created the Bluegrass State Games, an annual amateur sporting competition that is the longest-running event of its kind in the country.

In a 1987 letter to the editor that was published in the Herald-Leader as Collins was leaving office, H.E. “Hank” Everman of Richmond called Collins Kentucky’s “Cinderella.”

“She cared enough to persevere when the legislature fought her initial proposals and when the ‘wicked sisters’ of the press castigated her decisions and applauded her setbacks,” he wrote. “She showed a remarkable vision in linking education and economic progress.

“Despite the loss of federal revenue and the decline of Kentucky coal and tobacco incomes, she brought hope to many and even excited us with the Toyota package and the related ‘satellite’ businesses that have moved or will move into our state. No economic expert can deny the significance of this change in Kentucky’s economy. Thousands of jobs have become realities.

“Teachers will never forget her, as she brought us the only salary increase ‘above the cost of living’ in more than a decade. Moreover, she introduced some genuine education reforms. She tried to free education from politics through a constitutional amendment calling for the appointment, rather than the election, of a state superintendent of public instruction.”

Collins also oversaw the creation of a new statewide education program: the Governor’s School for the Arts.

Built on a similar regimen as the Governor’s Scholars Program, GSA is a summer program meant to cultivate talented high school artists.

“Myself and others took the Governor’s School for the Arts idea to her, and she embraced it,” Luallen, who led the department for the arts, said. “We put it together in less than a year, and held the first class, and it’s gone on to be a remarkable success. Once she became committed to get something done, she wanted to get it done.”

Martha Layne Collins’ background

Collins was born in Bagdad, in Shelby County, on Dec. 7, 1936, and went on to graduate from the University of Kentucky.

Her father ran an ambulance service and funeral business, which Collins later said “taught me service,” according to a 2001 interview with the William H. Berge Oral History Center at Eastern Kentucky University.

“I carried that into my running for office,” she said. “... I wanted to make Kentucky a better place.”

She worked as a school teacher in Jefferson and Woodford counties before beginning her political career in 1971, when she worked on Wendell Ford’s gubernatorial campaign.

She helped Walter “Dee” Huddleston on his campaign for U.S. Senate the following year, according to a bio on UK’s Hall of Distinguished Alumni website.

Collins was elected to her first office, clerk of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, in 1975.

“Due to a judicial reform amendment to the state Constitution, she is the last person to be elected clerk of the Court of Appeals and the first person to be clerk of the Kentucky Supreme Court,” the UK bio states.

She served as lieutenant governor with Gov. John Y. Brown Jr. from 1979 to 1983. In the 1979 election, when the post was still separately elected, she handily defeated Hal Rogers, a young prosecutor and GOP nominee who went on to become the longest continuously serving member of the U.S. House.

Collins said in the 2001 oral history interview that, having studied home economics in college, the media questioned her credentials to run for office. She said one thing that helped her be successful was that she made it a point to visit each of the state’s 120 counties.

“It’s like having 120 children,” she said. “They’re all different.”

Though she encountered resistance from both men and women as a female candidate, Collins said she worked to remove that obstacle by addressing it head on as she spoke to audiences.

She defeated two prominent Democrats in former Louisville Mayor Harvey Sloane and Grady Stumbo, a Cabinet secretary with then-governor John Y. Brown Jr.’s backing.

She wowed most of the people she met with her energy and charisma, according to Jim Gray, Kentucky’s transportation secretary and a former Lexington mayor, who first became acquainted with Collins when he was just 18 years old at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

“I remember thinking then just how magnetic she was. Whatever she set her mind to, she was going to accomplish,” Gray said.

Years later, Gray worked with Collins’ administration when his family company, Gray, Inc., was awarded one of the contracts to build the 3.8 million square foot original Toyota campus in Georgetown.

As a leader, Collins said she adopted a team approach.

“I think our administration got a lot of things done because we approached it as a team,” she said in the 2001 interview. “Everybody got credit. Everybody worked together. Everybody did their part.”

Luallen recalled a demanding environment. It wasn’t a negative one, but Collins expected a similar commitment to the role from her staff.

“Because she worked so hard, she was very demanding of her staff,” Luallen recalled. “She could be a task master, and she held everybody to a very high standard. We worked long hours. We worked hard.”

At that time, Kentucky governors were not permitted to seek a second consecutive term.

Collins after leaving governor’s office

After her time in the governor’s office, Collins spent six years as president of St. Catharine College and held residencies and other leadership positions at the University of Louisville, University of Kentucky and Georgetown College. She was a fellow with the Harvard University Institute of Politics.

Collins also served as chair and CEO of the Kentucky World Trade Center and became an international trade consultant for the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.

Collins was married to Dr. Bill Collins, a dentist who in 1993 was convicted of using his influence to extort money from people seeking state contracts during Martha Layne Collins’ term as governor. He was sentenced to five years in federal prison.

Martha Layne Collins was not implicated in the scheme.

Patton told the Herald-Leader he was afraid of Collins running again when he sought the office in 1995, since a recent constitutional amendment had made it possible for governors to seek second terms.

“We were concerned about her running again because she would have probably won or come close to winning. She didn’t run, and I think she didn’t run because of Bill’s issues,” Patton said.

The Collinses have two children, Steve and Marla.

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