Dennis Franklin, the Gaffney, S.C., Dirt Late Model racer known as Rambo, could tell something wasn't quite right healthwise as he approached his 50th birthday last July.

What was it? He wasn’t sure.

“At nighttime I’d been feeling stuff in my belly moving,” Franklin said in his distinctive Southern drawl during a recent Schaeffer’s Southern Nationals event at Wythe Raceway in Rural Retreat, Va. “I kept telling (fiancee) Dawn (Sullivan), ‘You know, something in my belly moves.’ She told me I was crazy.”

Eventually Franklin couldn’t overlook that he might be experiencing a problem. He recalled that he “lost about 70 pounds but my belly wouldn’t never go down. Actually, my belly got to hitting the steering wheel, and I thought they’d moved the steering wheel in the car.”

Franklin finally made an appointment with a doctor in mid-July last year to undergo a thorough examination. He was immediately hospitalized when tests revealed he was suffering from a serious condition.

“They pumped 2-and-a-half-gallons of fluid out of my belly and told me what the problem was,” he said.

Franklin was diagnosed with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a severe form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. NASH is considered a “silent” disease that often has few or no symptoms, and Franklin’s case was only found after he developed complications — the swelling and fluid in the abdomen — that led to cirrhosis of the liver. 

The diagnosis immediately sidelined Franklin from competition the remainder of the season. One year later, he still hasn’t climbed into the cockpit of his familiar No. 2 machine since July 3, 2024, when he finished 15th after engine trouble at his hometown’s Cherokee Speedway. He’s also waiting for a liver transplant in hopes of fully regaining his health.

“I got a spot on my kidney, too, and I went (earlier this month for an exam) and it hadn’t gotten no bigger, so we’re going to proceed with the liver transplant,” Franklin said. “They put me on top of the list, and I’m just sitting here waiting on a match” from a deceased donor.

Franklin said he’s surprisingly feeling “perfectly fine” aside from the fact that he “ain’t got much energy” because his blood pressure has been lowered. He hasn’t “turned yellow or nothing like that” from jaundice and isn’t undergoing any special treatment aside from managing the disease as he awaits a transplant, which can happen at any time at the Health University Medical Center in Charleston, S.C.

“They said they do (transplant surgeries) Monday through Friday from 8 to 5. I got a suitcase packed, and I just know when they call, I go down there,” said Franklin, who turns 51 on July 24. “It could happen today, it could tomorrow. I’m just ready to get it over with.”

Of course, Franklin can’t stay away from the racetrack even though he’s unable to get behind the wheel. “This is all I’ve ever done,” he said of racing, so he’s still deep into the sport, continuing to field his self-owned equipment for Layton Sullivan, Franklin’s 25-year-old stepson. Sullivan has been running Crate Late Models for several seasons but Franklin has given him a chance to step up his activity, including his first stab at Super Late Model action. 

Sullivan has quickly impressed Franklin. His Super Late Model debut, in March 2’s March Madness event at Cherokee, was especially noteworthy. Sullivan won a heat race led the 50-lap feature’s first 14 circuits off the pole before a water pressure issue knocked him out for a 24th-place finish.

Since then Sullivan has made more than a half-dozen Super Late Model starts, including a ninth-place finish in July 13’s Schaeffer’s Southern Nationals show at the giant half-mile Wythe oval. He has two top-fives, placing third in May 24’s Ultimate Southeast Series feature at Lancaster (S.C.) Motor Speedway and fourth in June 21’s Southern Thunder Series affair at Cherokee. He also scored a career-high $10,000 victory in April 12’s Crate Racin’ USA Daniel Lambert Memorial at Screven Motor Speedway in Sylvania, Ga.

“I don’t tell everybody this just because he’s my stepson, but he’s really good,” Franklin said of Sullivan. “I mean, he’s really developed way faster than I thought he would. I figured we’d have a learning curve but he’s really progressed fast. He’s real smooth, and we got a lot of great people that help us. I mean, that’s the main thing — we lean on them a lot.

“We’ve been racing a lot around the house, running a lot of Crate stuff too, just trying to get him out there and get him as many laps as I can get him. I actually enjoy watching him to be honest with you. He gets beat out of shape a whole lot easier than I did, you know? He panics. He just don’t want to tear nothing up, you know, but he’s a good kid.

“Hopefully, somebody will pick him up to go on the national tour someday, you know, because, I mean, I think he’s going to be one of them drivers,” he added. “I’m just going to let him race as long as I can keep going with him. He’s got a couple of good sponsors, and mainly all my sponsors stayed with us, and that helps a lot. He’s gonna be all right I think.”

Franklin has a formidable racing stable with three Excel Racing Chassis built by Lee Cooper, a veteran mechanic from Woodruff, S.C., whom Franklin has know for years. His team includes a Super and Crate Late Model and he’s in the process of putting together a CT525 machine to do some racing in that budding division.

There’s no hired crewman with Franklin’s team, but he noted that Sullivan essentially “works on it full time.” Franklin is also “down in the shop every day” working alongside him since he ended his stint running a tow-truck company owned by one of his best friends who recently passed away. (He helped train his friend’s son to take over the business.)

“We’re just gonna go and keep racing,” Franklin said. “If something happens to me, it’s all gonna be (Sullivan’s) and he can do what he wants to do.”

Franklin is confident, however, that he’ll be around well into the future to see Sullivan come of age as a racer — and turn more laps himself. He admitted “it’s a struggle” for him to not be racing as he has since he was 14 years old, but he sees a comeback on the horizon.

“They want to know if I miss it, you know, if I’m gonna go back to driving,” Franklin said of people who talk to him at the track as he’s helping Sullivan. “I tell them, ‘Yeah, if I get me a liver, I’m definitely coming back.’ But I’m probably going to drive for somebody else. I’ll just let (Sullivan) run my stuff.

“I mean, I love it. You know, my dad loved it. Nobody loved racing more than my daddy, and I know he'd want me to keep on going.”

Indeed, Franklin’s late father, James “Dick” Franklin, continues to have a huge influence on his racing nearly two years after his July 27, 2023, death at 70. The elder Franklin was Rambo’s biggest supporter throughout his successful racing career, which includes four Carolina Clash Series titles and a tour-leading 45 wins; two Ultimate Southeast championships; and, among many other checkered flags, a national-touring series victory over late Hall of Fame Scott Bloomquist n a Stacker2 Xtreme DirtCar Series event on Sept. 11, 2003, at Lavonia (Ga.) Speedway.

“He’d sit down in that shop and when I got there and it didn’t matter what I was doing,” Franklin said of his father. “He’d say, ‘Where you been at? We gotta get started.’ He loved racing and more than anybody I know.

“Every time my hauler left the shop, my daddy was in it. I catch myself riding home sometimes at night and looking over to see if he’s sitting there. I miss him every day.”

Franklin has made sure his father’s personality and well-known generosity has rubbed off on him.

“He was a good man,” Franklin said. “You know, me and (chassis builder) Barry Wright was talking the other day, and we both said, ‘I never heard him say nothing bad about nobody. Ever.’

“He always, if somebody come by the shop and needed something, if we had it, you could have it. That’s just the way he was, and that’s the way I am. If I got it, you can get it.”

Thinking of his father is how Franklin has been able to handle the fear and anxiety associated with a serious medical condition that not only has forced him out of racing but threatens his life. He’s not scared in the least of undergoing a liver transplant and the post-surgery regiment of anti-rejection medication that will follow.

“You know, if something were to happen today, it’s like I tell everybody, I don’t want them to feel sorry for me,” Franklin said. “I’ve lived a good life, you know, and, I mean, two good things are going to happen — I’m either going to see my daddy (in heaven) or I’m going to be here with my mama. Either way, I'm prepared for either one.”