The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Meet the happiest man in ‘dream town’
N.Y. man achieved wish to move to Guilford, now fights kidney failure
Carl J. Frano had an ear-to-ear grin as he greeted me outside his Guilford home last Monday afternoon.
“Every day, without fail, I say, ‘I can’t believe I live here!’ ” he said.
For 20 years, ever since he had an epiphany while standing in the Henry Whitfield House and Museum, it had been Frano’s dream to leave New York City and move to this shoreline town.
The last time I interviewed him, in November 2006, he was talking about his “dream fantasy” and leading group tours of Guilford’s historic district as a fundraiser for WPKN, where he has been a DJ for 28 years.
At that time, he was seeing no progress in making his dream a reality.
But in 2011, a series of unfortunate events helped move him toward that new home. “It was a bad year,” he told me as we sat in his spacious living room. One of his two cats, Chip, was perched on his lap. (Dale is more independent.)
“In July 2011, my mother passed away. Then my brother died.”
There were other, relatively minor issues at that time, but the kind of things that can make you wonder if it’s time to make a lifestyle change. For instance, his apartment, where he had lived for 33 years, became infested with bedbugs.
Frano also recalled “the sound of the sirens. You stand on the sidewalk and the siren will go off, right next to your ear. It unnerved me.”
“I realized I’d hit a low point in my life. I thought, ‘This is the perfect time to start a new chapter. I think I really want to give Guilford a try.’ I wanted to try the suburban lifestyle and home ownership. I’d never owned a home in my life.”
Knowing he had some inheritance money to help him achieve that Guilford dream, he began his quest in the spring of 2012. But first, he had to work out the comparatively wild notion of moving to California.
“My three top choices were Palm Springs, San Diego and Guilford. I told my friend K.C. Ryan about it and she said, ‘Come up and visit me in New Haven. Bring a pen and piece of paper. We’ll do the pluses and minuses of all three choices.’ Guilford won by a landslide.”
Frano said the main reason why he decided against California was he didn’t want to give up his radio show. You can hear him (89.5 FM or live-streamed at wpkn.org) on the first and third Wednesdays of every month from 9 a.m. to noon, spinning his oldies from the 1960s and joyfully telling his listeners how great is that music. Often, he sings along with it.
The other pluses for Guilford on that piece of paper included not wanting to leave his many friends in the Northeast and his love of our four seasons.
After Frano completed his tabulation that day, Ryan said, “How would you like to go for a little drive in Dream Town?”
Of course they visited the Whitfield House, built in 1639, and today the oldest house in Connecticut. It’s a particularly historic site for Frano; it was there, on Columbus Day weekend of 1991, that he fell in love with Guilford.
“I walked in and I said, ‘What the heck? Where am I? This town is beautiful!’ And this voice inside my head said, ‘This town is your home.’ ”
During that return visit in May 2012, Frano said to Ryan: “There’s a house around the corner that I saw online was for sale. I want to see if it’s still available.”
They went there and saw the daunting steep driveway, but the “For sale” sign was still out front. They walked up to the house, a handsome contemporary (1971) two-story structure, surrounded by woods. Frano said, “This is fantastic!” and he called the real estate agent.
“Two weeks later, I owned this house,” he said. “I moved in on August 27, 2012.”
I asked if this had turned out to be what he had long dreamed. “Randy, I have never been happier in my entire life. And I’m a pretty happy person!” He burst out laughing.
And yet, it’s not all pure happiness for Carl J. Frano. Before he left New York, he began to experience problems with his kidneys. The situation got much worse in the second half of 2012 after he stopped seeing his kidney specialist in New York. “By that December, I was very, very sick.”
He was taken by ambulance to Yale New Haven Hospital and its
Intensive Care Unit. He was in that hospital for 17 days.
“I missed my Christmas show that year!” he said with his booming laugh. But he sang the praises of the hospital and its staff, including the people who cleaned his room. “Kindness, consideration, compassion, you name it.”
However, in July 2016, he went back there to have a kidney removed.
“Both of my kidneys are kaput,” he said. And so now he must have dialysis treatment three times every week, in sessions that last four hours. He passes the time watching the Turner Classic Movies and Home and Garden channels.
Frano is as ebullient about the Davita Branford Dialysis treatment center as he is about Yale New Haven
Hospital. “It’s like a family. It’s a pleasure to go there.
“Dialysis saved my life,” he said. “I’m so grateful that I’m where I’m at. I’m a very lucky person.”
But Frano’s treatment can’t go on indefinitely. “I’m on the kidney transplant list. It could be sometime this year.”
Another big thing happened in Frano’s life in the fall of 2012. “My friend Bill Roberts invited me to go to the First Congregational Church of Guilford. I liked what they were talking about. They don’t hit you over the head with the Bible. Their focus is fellowship and being good to your neighbors.”
Frano is in that church every Sunday morning. “It’s meant so much to me.”
He is impressed by the good works the kids in the church are doing and he’s also impressed with the other kids of Guilford. “I
hate kids! But the kids are so nice in this town!”
Frano said the adults are nice too. He notices when he does his two-mile roundtrip walk to the Guilford Green and back that people he doesn’t even know call out to him. “I’ve come to discover that Guilford is a very special town. The people in this town are super-friendly and openminded. I think there’s something in the water.”
He praised the church’s two ministers, the Rev. Dr. Ginger Brasher-Cunningham and the Rev. Sarah Verasco. “They do a fabulous job.” (“Fabulous” is almost certainly Frano’s favorite word. He uses it a lot on his show.)
During his walks, he often encounters flocks of geese and sometimes wild turkeys. He loves it.
He told me he also loves hanging out at the Owl Shop in New Haven on Friday afternoons, smoking cigars with his pals. But his true happy place is that Bridgeport studio of WPKN, a noncommercial alternative station.
“I’ve never gotten a dime for it. The love of the music brought me to WPKN. From the beginning I had a desire to express this music and PKN gave me that opportunity. Over the years, Randy, I’ve come to realize my program provides joy and a chance for people to have their spirits lifted. We’re living in troubled times, particularly lately, so it’s nice to have a refuge like WPKN.”
Before I left his happy home, Frano invited me (and the general public) to the annual Carl J. Frano Birthday Bash Sock Hop, to be held May 18 at 7 p.m. at the Lyric Theater in New Haven, as a fundraiser for WPKN. Frano will be turning 61 and gleefully spinning his favorite oldies. It’s guaranteed to be fabulous!