Looking at them snuggled up on the couch, his arm draped tenderly across her shoulders and her hand resting on his leg, it’s hard to believe that it wasn’t love at first sight when Marianne Ward met Les Franklin some 30 years ago.
He was smitten from the moment he laid eyes on her at a charity function in the early 1980s. She was hesitant to become involved until she knew a little more about him, dismissing him as “Oh, some jerk that I met” to a friend who asked “Who is that guy?” when, after his third attempt to land a date, she finally agreed to meet him after her daily gym workout.
But when she did open her heart — the couple dated for 10 years before marrying in 1997 — it was for keeps.
Marianne offered Les a love so strong that without it, he is quick to admit, he never would have survived the immense tragedy of losing two sons to suicide.
Shaka Franklin was 16 when he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in October 1990. Ten years later, Shaka’s older brother Jamon, who was 31, died from carbon-monoxide poisoning in the back seat of his father’s vintage Cadillac while it was parked in the garage of the family home in southeast Denver.
“It took three women to save my life: Marianne and these two,” the 75-year-old former IBM executive says, squeezing his wife’s hand and nodding toward the floor where the couple’s cockapoos, Naji and Gia, are snoozing at his feet. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them.”
In the months following Shaka’s death, Les established the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth in an effort to provide at-risk young people with activities such as ice hockey, figure skating, a recording studio and computer lab that would lift their spirits, instill self-confidence and show them that suicide is not the answer to problems seemingly too great to bear. Marianne, who turns 65 on April 21, is the executive director.
The foundation will mark its 25th anniversary at the April 24 Love Our Children Luncheon held at the Marriott City Center.
“It’s hard to fathom how Les and Marianne have kept going all these years,” observes Denver County Court Judge Dianne Briscoe. “The difficulties they have gone through are unimaginable.”
Briscoe met Les in 1988, when he was director of the Governor’s Job Training Office and she was the legal counsel.
Briscoe’s mother, the late Ruth Denny, was an educator and was the Shaka Franklin Foundation’s first donor. She continued to make an annual contribution until her death in 2012. Denny also had been longtime friends with Marianne’s parents, the late Elizabeth and Jim Ward. Elizabeth taught third grade and her husband was principal of Manual High School before becoming director of alternative education for the Denver Public Schools.
George Brantley, retired director of the Hope Center, and his wife, author Peg Brantley, got to know the Franklins when the men were serving on the Wells Fargo Bank Community Board.
“You’d need the entire newspaper simply to highlight what Marianne and Les have done, privately and without any fanfare, to help individuals find better lives,” Peg Brantley says. “Marianne is one of the most amazing and giving people I know.”
They’ve taken a young ice hockey player from San Diego, who was spending his first winter in Colorado and had no socks or winter clothing, to Sports Authority, where they outfitted him in $2,000 worth of weather-appropriate clothing. They’ve opened their home to countless teenagers with no place else to go, delivered food to children in Africa whose breakfast consisted of biscuits and sugar water, and have helped connect people here to services that can help them get back on their feet.
Les and Marianne’s paths first crossed at an Ebony Fashion Fair luncheon put on by Denver chapter of The Links Inc. She was there with her daughter, Shelli, and both were wearing white dresses that he thought made them look like angels. “I remember thinking ‘That is one beautiful woman,’ ” Les said.
They met again, several weeks later, at yet another benefit, this one held at a club owned by former Denver Nugget Fatty Taylor. Les gave Marianne his card; she promised she’d call, but didn’t.
Springs native
Born in Colorado Springs, Les grew up surrounded by women. His parents had divorced — he was 13 when he met his biological father — and he and his mother, Selena Bragg, lived with her mother while Bragg worked in a nightclub/restaurant owned by his aunt. Les worked there, too, serving as night manager from ninth grade until he graduated from high school with a D average and an athletic scholarship to the University of Northern Colorado, where he earned a degree in business.
Years later, at one of the 1,000-plus suicide-prevention speaking engagements that he did annually both here and abroad, he was approached by a young Latino.
“This high school kid tells me he basically has an F grade average, but that my talk had given him hope. Four or five years go by and I’m speaking at the University of Notre Dame and I’m again approached by a young Latino. He asks if I know who he is, and I confess that I don’t. It was the same fellow!”
After college, Franklin spent four years as a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force and then came home to Colorado, joined IBM and met Cherllyn Gale, the woman who would become his first wife and the mother of his sons.
Franklin did well at IBM, receiving promotions that enabled him to have stints as an executive on loan, first to the United Negro College Fund, where he put in two years as chairman of its Los Angeles office and hob- nobbed with stars like Sammy Davis Jr., Redd Foxx and Elizabeth Taylor, and then to the state of Colorado, where he directed the job training office for Gov. Roy Romer.
Long hours and time spent away from home took a toll on the marriage, and after a separation and attempts to work things out, the couple divorced.
The Franklin sons, particularly Shaka, who was named after the 1896 Zulu warrior king who in an eerie coincidence also committed suicide, took their parents’ divorce hard.
That their mother didn’t seek custody or visitation rights led to an estrangement that didn’t abate until she was diagnosed with the breast cancer that would later claim her life.
In retrospect, Les has a better grasp on the circumstances that caused Shaka’s despair: the family dynamics and an injury that effectively ended his run as a high school football star.
He also has come to realize that a bicycle accident when Shaka was 14 may have played a role, too.
“He wound up with a knot on his head that was the size of my fist,” Les said. “He was never the same after that; his personality became more dark.”
Head-injury focus
How head injuries like concussion and traumatic brain injury factor into suicide is now a focus of the Shaka Franklin Foundation, as are such issues as social anxiety disorder and borderline personality disorder. Speakers at recent Love Our Children Luncheons have shared their experiences with concussion and discussed the need for improved athletic helmet design and other measures.
His own health challenges, which include a heart attack and the diabetes that has caused temporary blindness in one eye, have made Les cut back on speaking engagements and travel, but they haven’t lessened his passion.
“This is our life,” he declares. “Marianne works (on foundation-related business) from sunup to sundown seven days a week. I can’t drive right now because of my eye, so when I have to coach ice hockey or meet someone, she has to give me a ride. We’ll eat dinner at 8 o’clock and when she’s still at it at 10:30 p.m., the dogs and I disappear into my man cave and watch TV until 3 a.m.”
Marianne, who had been a gemologist before she and Les were married, does take a daily break for her beloved Jazzercise; they also enjoy walking their dogs.
Neither takes a salary for their work on behalf of the Shaka Franklin Foundation; they make a personal donation of $10,000 to it annually. “We don’t want people to think that we are asking them to contribute when we haven’t,” Marianne explains.
They have also written their wills so that assets including their home, and one that belonged to her late parents, will go to the foundation when they die.
“Our purpose is to be there whenever a child needs to feel whole, to live and to go on to be successful,” Marianne explains. “We don’t care what their color is or how they arrived at their present situation. We just want to help because every life matters.”
Joanne Davidson: 303-809-1314, jdavidson@denverpost.com or
25th Love Our Children Luncheon
When: April 24
Where: Marriott City Center
Details: Silent auction, 10 a.m., lunch at 11:30 a.m.
Keynote speaker: Heisman Trophy-winning running back Ricky Williams
Special guest: Actor John Amos
Tickets: $125 and up
Reservations: 303-337-2515 or info@shaka.org
