Lynne M. Franklin

March 13, 1929 - December 8, 2017

Lynne M. Franklin died on December 8, 2017. Born in Brooklyn on March 13, 1929, she was the daughter of Robert and Bella Frank. She grew up in New York City and attended New York University. She married Albert S. Franklin in 1949. Lynne and Al moved to New Jersey with their family in 1960. Lynne became very interested in politics and was an aid to Congressman Edwin Forsythe in his Moorestown, New Jersey, office. While there, she helped run Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign for the state of New Jersey. During those years, she also had the pleasure of campaigning with Vice President Gerald Ford and Senator Clifford Case. She was one of only a select group of women in the state of New Jersey appointed by Governor Cahill to the Commission on Women, Department of Community Affairs, whose goal was to seek ways to improve life for women in the State of New Jersey. While living in New Jersey, Lynne worked for prison reform for women and was appointed Chair of the Committee on Penal Reform. She spent five years visiting prisons, interviewing inmates, sending reports to Governor Cahill, and even spent a day behind bars herself to get a sense of what they endured. In 1975 Lynne, her son Bruce and her husband Al, who had been a vice president of Sam Goody in New York and Philadelphia, and later the president of the retail division of the American Broadcasting Company, decided to take advantage of an opportunity to open their own chain of retail music stores in New England. This resulted in their relocating to Hartford, Connecticut, where Lynne, Al and their son Bruce worked side by side for 20 years in the establishment and operation of a chain of music retail stores known as Al Franklin’s Musical World. Lynne’s husband Al died in 1991. After being widowed for six years, Lynne was introduced, by family, to Bob Stone of Staten Island New York, who had lost his wife two years earlier. Both had great marriages for over 40 years, yet were able to discover a new love for each other. Deciding to build a new life together, they relocated to Sun Lakes, Arizona, where Lynne and Bob traveled extensively. Lynne remained an avid follower of the political scene, enjoying world travel and reading (primarily biographies and history). Lynne is predeceased by her parents and by her brother, Murray Frank, and is survived by her sister, Carol Wolk, and brother-in-law, Al Wolk, both of New York, and by her sister-in-law, Dorothy Frank, of Pennsylvania. Lynne is also survived by her son, Bruce Franklin, his wife Karen, of West Hartford, Connecticut, her son, Scott Franklin, of West Hartford, Connecticut and by her loving grandchildren, Connor, Brian, Paul and Douglas.