My mysterious son

by Dick Russell

"What a father will do to fight the mental illness that has destroyed his son. What does a father do when hope is gone that his only son can ever lead anything close to a 'normal' life? That's the question that haunted Dick Russell in the fall of 2011, when his son, Franklin, was thirty-two. At the age of seventeen, Franklin had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. For years he spent time in and out of various hospitals, and even went through periods of adamantly denying that Dick was actually his father. A mixed-race child, Franklin was handsome, intelligent, and sensitive until his mental...