Like Father, Like Daughter

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It’s a tough road many a family has had to travel down, but the Collins clan decided early on that their loss could be someone else’s gain.

And so it was that when Gerry Collins knew that cancer was going to take his life, he fought to save others from a similar fate by fronting a powerful TV campaign aimed at fellow smokers.

The diagnosis came in the summer of 2013, and before his departure in March 2014, the Greystones father became the face of the HSE’s powerful Quit campaign.

And now, one of Gerry’s children, Lisa, has charted those 10 months, and the impact her father’s diagnosis, and his nationwide campaign, had not only on the world outside their door, but how the Collins family – wife Delly, children Stephen, Ciara and Lisa – coped with the illness, the fame, and the inevitable end.

It’s all there in Lisa Jennifer Collins’ book, The Man Who Moved A Nation: A Daughter’s Story, out now. Throughout her life, Lisa had always kept a detailed diaries and journals, but over those tumultuous 10 months, there were too many thoughts, and twists and turns, to write down. And so it was that it took a whole year after her father’s death before Lisa was finally able to put pen to paper again.

“I wish I was an actor,” Gerry stated as that 2014 Quit campaign took hold, “because, if I was an actor, I’d be acting about dying.”

We had hoped to talk to Lisa about her book, and her “loveable rogue” of a father, but, the lady has been too busy talking to the big guns first to get back to us. Suffice to say, this 224-page love letter to a brave father is no doubt an emotional read, and one that will hopefully inspire a whole new slew of smokers to think twice before lighting up.

It’s what Gerry would have wanted…

You can grab your copy of The Man Who Moved The Nation: A Daughter’s Story on Amazon right about here.