Keith Franklin

Keith Franklin, born in 1948, survived football team bus trips to Danville and Roanoke as a high school student and a heart transplant as an adult. The only time he was scared was when the Lane High School football team—state champions in 1964, and the last undefeated team in 1966—was trapped in a bus trying to leave the stadium. “We were all scared,” Franklin remembered. “We didn’t know what was going to happen. They would turn the bus over on us, and we’re talking about a big Trailways Continental bus. They got that rocking pretty good.” On another occasion a player on the host team threw something through one of the windows on the team bus as the team was trying to get on the road back to Charlottesville. Franklin was a catcher on the baseball team and a tackle on the undefeated football teams of the mid-1960s. He says, “Football brought the school together, all the kids, the teachers, parents. It was just a great experience for me.” Subsequently, Franklin played football for Randolph-Macon College. After completing college, he worked in a bank for a short time before joining his father’s custom home construction business, which he eventually headed. He built custom homes until he retired.