REMEMBERING ROGER FRANKLIN
Ukiah music and entertainment photographer dies at age 75
Roger Franklin enjoyed a long career with the Ukiah Unified School District, but he became known throughout Mendocino County for his photos of concerts, car shows and other events. He died in his home on Friday, Jan. 27. He was 75.
Roger — called Rog by his close friends and family — wasn't in a band, but he was a pillar of the local music and arts scene nonetheless. Instead of a guitar or drums, his instrument of choice was his camera, which he used to gain admission to hundreds of concerts, beer fests and other happenings. To return the favor, Franklin supplied musicians, promoters and performers with professional quality images, always free of charge.
“If you go to an event and say you're a photographer, they'll always let you in to shoot,” Franklin told The Ukiah Daily Journal in February 2019.
“He (Franklin) was very good, excellent in his photography and he has thousands of photos to prove it,” says Ukiah landscape photographer Robert B. Taylor, a close friend and frequent travel companion of Franklin's.
“He was known by many, many people and he was always very generous in sharing his photos with people,” Taylor adds.
“He was always really friendly, and everybody knew him in town and everybody liked him,” his brother Ken Franklin concurs. “And they all remember him taking photos everywhere.”
Roger Lee Franklin was born on April 2, 1947, in Culver City, the Los Angeles suburb known as the home of MGM Studios. His parents, George Washington Franklin and Martha Niswander Franklin, soon moved to Burbank where George established a successful carpet cleaning business. Once in Burbank, Roger was joined by two brothers — Kenneth (Ken) and Gregory — and a sister, Bonnie, all born three years apart.
Franklin graduated from Burbank High School in 1965. A year earlier, he met his future wife, Rebecca “Becky” Norris, in Burbank at a Wee-winders car club meeting. “It was love at first sight,” Rebecca recalls. The couple dated for four years before finally getting married on May 10, 1968 in an intimate ceremony in the chapel of a Methodist church.
To avoid the draft and the possibility of serving in Vietnam, Franklin joined the Air National Guard and served six years out of Van Nuys where he learned to be a teletype operator, a skill that landed him a job at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank in the early 1970s.
“There were no computers then so all messages were sent from his office,” Rebecca recalls. Franklin worked closely with many directors and producers and the young couple got to attend many screenings with movie stars. Frank Sinatra even gave them a wool blanket that the family still has.
“It was a fun gig,” Rebecca adds. On April 10, 1972, the Franklins had their first son, Greg, named after Rog's brother Gregory, who was struck by a car and killed on his way to school in 1960 when he was just 6 years old. A short time later, the growing family left the glamor of the movie industry behind and bought a house in Boron,
Calif. on the edge of the Mojave Desert to be near Rebecca's parents.
In Boron, Franklin worked as a millwright at U.S. Borax and started dabbling in photography. He set up a darkroom in their home in the days before digital cameras liberated photographers from having to use basic chemistry in their art. Franklin's original motivation for picking up the camera was to take pictures of Greg and the couple's second son, Daniel, who was born in 1977.
After the death of Rebecca's mother in 1986, the Franklins moved north to Ukiah, where Roger and Rebecca began long careers with the Ukiah Unified School District.
Roger serviced every school in the district as a technology and systems specialist while Rebecca taught third grade at Nokomis School. Roger's brother Ken and his wife, Susie, also taught elementary school there. Roger retired from the district in 2009 and Rebecca joined him in retirement a year later.
“Anything that was mechanical, he was the go-to guy to fix it at the school district, and that includes computers, and just about everything else too,” Taylor says.
But it was in Ukiah's cooler climate that Franklin blossomed as a photographer and ingratiated himself into the local music scene. He amassed countless images of concerts ranging from Willie and the Nighthawks at the brew pubs that were walking distance from his home to B.B. King at Konocti Harbor in Lake County and even punk wrestling shows at the Fillmore in San Francisco.
Franklin has photo credits in the Daily Journal going back to 1996 and several of his images of the 1990s-era punk wrestling show Incredibly Strange Wrestling were published in Bob Calhoun's memoir “Beer, Blood & Cornmeal” (2008, ECW Press).
In March 2019, Franklin joined his friend Robert B. Taylor and photographer Amy Melious for a public exhibition of their work titled “Gathering Light” at the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah.
“His photographs are a tribute to the creative force, the focus, vitality and raw emotion of musicians on stage,” Daily Journal reporter Carole Brodsky wrote about Franklin's work. “Franklin's photos expose those vulnerable pieces of a performer's soul during those intimate moments where the lines between audience and performer fade and disappear.”
“That was the highlight,” Taylor says of collaborating with his old friend.
“I really want everyone to know how generous he was,” Taylor continues. “He revamped the ventilation system in my darkroom, and he spent many hours helping me with Photoshop to get my photography book ready for publication.”
“He was always willing to help folks,” Ken Franklin says. “A few days before he died, he was fixing the circuit breakers here at the house.”
“He was a congenial, patient and calm guy,” Taylor reflects. “He was a nice guy to be around.”
Roger Franklin is survived by his wife, Rebecca (Becky); his brother Ken and sister Bonnie; his two sons, Greg and Daniel; and three grandchildren.
A memorial will be held for Roger Franklin on March 25, 2023 at 2 p.m. at Near & Arnold School of Performing Arts Theater, 508 W. Perkins St., Ukiah.