Frankie ‘had two lives’

Dishevelled, dirty and disorientated – Frankie Simmons was a familiar figure in the back of town where he wandered the streets for years pushing a grocery cart full of rusting and rotting memorabilia.

But behind the tattered shoes and the motorbike sprocket and assorted ornaments that hung around his neck lay glimpses of a past life.

It was a life that saw him proudly raise a family, attend his daughter’s secondary school graduation in a smart blue suit, work his way up the ranks at the Pink Beach Club and even have his artwork put on public display.

It is a past that few who witnessed his eccentric meanderings since mental illness took hold more than two decades ago would have had any inkling of.

“Frankie’, as he was known to almost everyone, died last Monday at the age of 61, just a few days after two good Samaritans found him slumped in a stairwell on Parson’s Road in Pembroke.

Today as his daughter, Kelli Simmons, prepared to fly back to Bermuda for her father’s funeral, she spoke of his battle with Schizophrenia and her family’s struggle to deal with his condition.

Ms Simmons, who is also known as Brown Suga, told the Bermuda Sun she felt her father had been let down by the island’s mental health system.

She said: “My father’s 61 years on this earth has a remarkable storyline because he really experienced two lives.

“The first 30 years were rather normal and productive according to the world’s standards and the second half where he lived on the streets of Pembroke like a homeless person.

“He defined the true meaning of pond dog but he lived his perception.”

Ms Simmons, who moved to the UK last August, and now works at a mental health support home, said her new job had given her a new insight into those suffering from mental illness.

She said: “From the age of seven I grew up plagued with embarrassment and confusion because no one ever took the time out to explain his mental condition or bizarre behaviours.

“I just wanted him to act like a normal dad.

“It was during my adolescent years that I started to notice the deterioration in his mental health. The symptoms started to manifest themselves.

“Each month it was weirder and weirder to my young brain and I witnessed a lot of bizarre behaviours, although he talked normal and his memory was sharp.

“Our worlds began to part like the Red Sea. I was losing a father.

“Even at the young age of nine I knew that black shoe polish caked on his entire face was not suntan lotion.”

She added: “My father was incredibly intelligent and he was a gifted artist.

“Few who saw him walking around Pembroke for the few decades would have had any idea about this past.

“Somewhere along the line his perception became distorted and that was hard for all of us to deal with.

“He was shunned and some people felt embarrassed by what he became.

“But what I have learned since his death is that he was more loved and respected that I had ever imagined.

“He knew everyone in Bermuda, or at least that is how it seemed.

“And I never imagined his story would touch so many people.”

In his younger years Frankie Simmons attended Robert Crawford/Churchill School and was a very popular pupil.

He went on to work as a maitre’d at Pink Beach Hotel and drove a smart car.

The talented painter married and went on to have two sons and a daughter as well as four grandchildren.

Ms Simmons added: “Mental illness is one of Bermuda’s biggest secrets attached to shame and stigma.

“I look forward to learning more about the Vulnerable Persons Act to protect people with cognitive or other disabilities.

“Bermuda has a moral duty of care and ethical responsibility and I feel like our mental health system failed my dad on so many levels.

“Hopefully his life, name memory and condition will open up a public dialogue on mental illness.”