Troy Anthony Franklin was born on April 19, 1969 at Annapolis Hospital located in Wayne, Michigan. He attended pre-school at Lincoln Elementary in Inkster until the family moved to Detroit in 1974. In Detroit, he attended Edison Elementary School and Vetal Elementary/Middle School where he remained through the eighth grade. During his elementary and Middle school period, he was extremely active. He played baseball, softball and basketball in the church league. As a result of his size, he was told he had to play softball with the third and fourth graders when he was in the second grade. He was also an anomaly as a baseball player; because he had the strongest arm on the team, his coach wanted him to pitch and he hated pitching. He was also a Cub Scout and Boy Scout. As a Boy Scout, he was only his Eagle Project away from becoming an Eagle Scout when high school sports got in the way. Also, during this period, he and his father went on many fishing, tent and bicycle camping trips together, aside from the scouts where his father was a leader. He also loved to skateboard and was a BMX bike racer. He accepted Christ into his life at an early age when the family joined Calvin Presbyterian Church after moving to Detroit. Troy elected to attend Benedictine High School. During his freshman year he played JV basketball, JV football and baseball. As he moved up in class, he settled on football, where he was team captain his senior year. He was also a baseball catcher. He graduated high school in the spring of 1987 and accepted a football scholarship to Mississippi Valley State University located in Itta Bena, Mississippi. After his freshman year, he returned to Detroit and attended Henry Ford Community College for one year. He then transferred to his parent's alma mater, Tennessee State University, located in Nashville, Tennessee. He graduated three years later, in Spring 1992, with a BS degree in Business Administration. His first job after college was as a Production Manager at a graphics company. He worked there a number of years until the business closed. He then worked for Enterprise, followed by a Supervisory position at Best Buy and lastly as an insurance agent, all in the Nashville area. He was diagnosed with diabetes when he came home for Christmas break during his freshman year in 1987. As his health began to markedly decline, due to diabetes, he returned to Detroit, in 2005, and worked as a Service Advisor at Jorgensen Ford until he was placed on dialysis. In spite of the many medical challenges he faced throughout his life, he lived his life and loved the life he lived. He never felt sorry for himself because of the hand he was dealt and never complained about it. He was so positive about his predicament that the dialysis technicians would refer new patients to him for counsel on how to manage life while on dialysis. In the roughly 15 years on dialysis, he never missed a treatment. He told a number of his peers he loved coming to dialysis because without it he would not be alive. He had a terrific sense of humor and found joy in everything. He maintained many lifelong friendships from as early as elementary school through college and beyond. Left to cherish his memory are his mother and father (Marian and Harry Franklin), his sister Kelli Franklin-Joyner (Keith); uncle George Williams (Gail), aunts M. Cecile Williams, Beverly Smith (Thomas), Joyce Helms (Bruce), nephew Austin Joyner, niece Brooke Joyner and numerous cousins located in Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia.