Orlando Franklin: Giving thanks to the mentors who helped me get where I am today

Denver Broncos offensive lineman Orlando Franklin is giving Yahoo Canada Sports an exclusive first-person account of life in the NFL. Franklin grew up in Toronto before playing at the University of Miami and was drafted by the Broncos in the second round in 2011.

It hasn’t been easy to get where I am today. I had a great support group and a lot of individuals who helped me along the way. That help, more often than not, did not come on the football field. These are some of the people I would like to recognize.

My older brother Kingsley Levy has always been a big mentor in my life. Although he always got himself into trouble, he always made me understand that he chose to do bad, so he wanted me to go the different route. He’s been through a lot. He’s older now and his life is cleaned up. He made sure that I did not follow his example. I can talk to my brother about anything. Any situation I have I always like to bring it to my brother first.

Charlie Wiltshire is another man who played a big role in my life. Charlie lives in Pickering but each Sunday he would drive to Scarborough to bring me to church when my mom was working. He was a person I could rely on for anything.

Charlie has three sons – Justin, Lamont and Aaron – and a daughter named Jenna, and they have always been in my life. They treat me like I’m one of their own. I remember Charlie paying for me to play football. When I got drafted in 2011 I had my draft party at Lamont’s house. We showed the draft there and I had all my friends and family come to his house. It’s stuff like that they didn’t have to do for me that I will always appreciate. They come to Denver once a year, and Charlie is always asking me if I mind if they stay at my house and I always have to say “For what you guys did for me, you can stay at my house for three, four months if you want.”

I moved from Toronto to Florida in spring 2004. When I was down there my mom was also living there but she was working as a health care aide so she was living with the elderly people she worked for. I was living with one of my mom’s friends in a house with four people in a little two bedroom apartment. We got 13 complaints in three months so we ended up getting evicted.

I went in to school the next day and told my coach I was getting evicted and I was thinking of heading back to Canada. I remember my coach saying we’ll figure something out. They met with this lady, her name was Sharron Mashburn, and I ended up staying with her. So I was living with this family that I had never met that opened up their doors to me, and for that I’m grateful. Without that help I was on my way back to Toronto.

Mrs. Mashburn had a son named Eric, he was the right tackle. One day we got into an argument, and I decided I didn’t want to stay there anymore. At this point I’d been in Florida about nine months, so the coaches knew me and we had a good relationship. I ended up moving in with one of my coaches, Bill Caesar. Talk about an all-around great person. Although my mom was paying Coach Caesar rent he would go the extra mile to make sure that I was all right, and just teach me different things. He taught me a lot more than he really signed up for. I believe he’s a great person with a great heart.

My high school coach was Coach Christopher Bean. When I got there I only had a 1.8 GPA -- in Florida that’s not cutting it, you can’t even get on the field. I didn’t really see the dream as being realistic. I was missing a lot of school too. Coach Bean brought me into the gym and we stood on our Eagles emblem in the middle of the gym. He told me “Listen, Orlando. Right now you’re at a point in your life where anything can happen.”

He stood right behind me and he put his hand out to the side of me and said “If you go down this path, you could end up in jail.” Then he spun me a little bit and said “If you go down this path, you could end up on drugs.” He turned me a little bit more. “If you go down this path, you could up dead.”

He gave me these different scenarios. But when he got to the last one he said “Or you could choose to go down this path – and have everything you ever wanted. You could get an opportunity to go to college for free. You could play football at a high level. You could not only get your degree, but you could make it to the NFL.”

That just stuck with me. No one has ever put it down to me like that. I thank him for that.

My high school guidance counselor Marrisa Fontaine helped point me in the right direction. She’s the only person I’ll let call me ‘Shrek.’ She calls me Shrek all the time. She sat with me two or three times a week and explained to me about my different classes and what I needed to do to get my GPA up. She was always there for me, she didn’t give up on me. And I know there must have been frustrating times, because I was not the easiest person to deal with back then.

All these people helped me in different ways and I’m thankful for all of them.

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