Franklin D.R. Allen, who died May 17 at age 69, was known to friends and regular clients as “Frank From The Bank,” a reference to his longtime job as a teller for an Aurora branch office of U.S. Bank.
Genial and outgoing, Allen had his own coterie of customers. Many of them waved ahead others in line, preferring to wait until Allen was free to handle their transactions.
As a child, Allen survived a bout with polio that left his left leg permanently crippled.
Though he learned to walk with leg braces, Allen felt more adept with crutches, which he used throughout his adult life.
Despite his disability, Allen refused to rely on disability insurance. Instead, he managed a bowling alley in Detroit, where he worked 12-hour shifts maintaining the lanes and two bars. He became a bank teller when the family moved to Colorado.
When he left work, Allen coached his sons’ baseball and basketball teams, an act of such pure love and will that his son Gayland Allen only fully appreciated years later.
“I had a different understanding of him, and how hard it was getting around on crutches, when I broke my leg 10 years ago,” Gayland Allen said. “Nothing stopped him. He quarterbacked. He played baseball. The whole nine yards. He just kept going.”
Frank Allen called upon that fortitude in 2003, when his granddaughter, 8-year-old Rupell Allen, drowned in a condominium swimming pool.
Frank Allen, then a recent widower, found himself grieving for his grandchild and attempting to console Gayland, the girl’s father.
“Frank kind of accepted that things happen and we have to move on,” U.S. Bank supervisor LaVonne Sayler said. “He was more concerned about his son, and how he would take it.”
Survivors include sons Gayland Allen of Denver and Derrick Allen of Aurora; daughters Teresa Allen of Denver, and Virginia Allen and Dana Allen, both of Aurora; brother Charles Allen of Denver; sister Hazel Finney of Honeygrove, Texas; 14 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
