Brother To Brother

After one son's suicide, Les Franklin turned grief into civic action. Then tragedy struck again

BY RITA HEALY/DENVER

Few things could stop Les Franklin. Born into 
poverty, he was offered an athletic scholarship, 
got a business degree and became a key executive 
for IBM in Boulder, Colo. He bought a dream home 
in a mostly white, gated community, worked for 
the Governor and even ran for Congress. In 1990 
tragedy struck, when his 16-year-old son Shaka 
shot himself to death. But Franklin did not let 
grief paralyze him. He founded the Shaka Franklin 
Foundation for Youth, dedicated to the prevention 
of youth suicide. Through it, Franklin, 61, 
became an even more prominent presence in Colorado. 
His fund raisers drew donations from the Denver 
Broncos, Coors, Norwest Bank, Texaco and Conoco. 
The half-million-dollar foundation is developing 
recording studios, a 240-acre mountain retreat, 
a computer lab for kids who are at risk and a 
hockey arena. "Les' program is very successful," 
says Dar Emme, founder of the Yellow Ribbon 
Suicide Prevention Program in Westminster, Colo. 
"Taking the grief of losing a child and turning 
it into something positive is absolutely wonderful."

Then, three weeks ago, Franklin's other son, Jamon, 
killed himself.

Jamon, 31, had worked for the foundation, driving 
kids to activities, helping them with their 
computers, their ice skates and their recording 
projects. But his behavior at home worried his 
father. "I knew he was depressed," says Les. "He'd 
sleep for a week. And then he was like a Ninja 
warrior, moving silently around the house, coming 
out at night to eat. I'd smell the food." Franklin 
says he left his son notes saying he loved him, 
but Jamon refused antidepressant medication, 
assuring his father that he would never follow 
his brother's path.

On Aug. 14, Les and his wife Marianne returned 
from a trip to Europe to discover a sickly sweet 
smell permeating their home. Then Les found the 
source: Jamon's decomposing body in the backseat 
of a restored Cadillac in the attached four-car 
garage. Jamon had apparently suffocated himself 
with carbon-monoxide fumes. 

When Shaka shot himself, Franklin had been stunned. 
"I didn't think black people killed themselves. I 
thought it was a white man's disease." Shaka had 
been a football star at the local high school. But 
sidelined with an injury, he began to worry about 
his mother Cherilyn, who was divorced from Les and 
would die of cancer in 1991. On Oct. 19, 1990, Shaka 
picked up his father's pistol and killed himself in 
a bedroom of the Franklins' dream house. 

Jamon's death, however, has made Franklin furious. 
"I know he never got over his brother's death, his 
baby brother, six years apart," Les told TIME 
shortly after discovering Jamon's body. "But he 
promised me that he'd never hurt me the way his 
brother hurt me, and in the final analysis he broke 
his promise, and I'm very angry." He adds, "There 
will be no Jamon's place. Shaka was 16; he was a 
baby. Jamon was a 31-year-old man. I'm not going 
to give him that. He knew I loved him. He made a 
horrible, horrible decision."

Les Franklin suspects his divorce hit his kids hard. 
But he also sees a genetic component in depression. 
He has heard that his father, with whom he has no 
ties, once attempted to kill himself, but it never 
registered until now. Depression never held back 
Les Franklin during his climb out of poverty. "Did 
Jamon have it hard?" he asks rhetorically. "Come 
on, look at this house! I was an IBM executive! 
And now I'm concerned about affluent black kids. 
There are the same patterns you see in the white 
community; they have more idle time, more time to
think. I don't know too many gang members who kill 
themselves. They kill you."

Les will remain the Shaka Franklin Foundation's 
chairman, but he is putting aside his work in 
suicide prevention. For the first time in his 
life, he feels defeated. He is also selling the 
home he worked so hard to build. "My two kids 
died 25 ft. apart, one in the bedroom and one in 
the garage. We thought it was our dream house, 
but it holds only sad, sad, hard memories."

"I thought I was a decent father," he says in the 
house where the smell of death still lingers. 
"I've cried so hard my face hurts." And yet 
something within him still grasps at a solution. 
"Somehow we've got to bring happiness back onto 
the planet so that people will want to live..." 
He reaches for a more precise word. "So that 
children will want to live."