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- Gospel star Kirk Franklin didn't know who his dad was until a few months ago, at 53.
- In his new documentary, he shares intimate moments with a man he now knows as his dad.
- Even though the DNA tests confirmed the truth, his mother still denied it.
Gospel star Kirk Franklin didn't know who his dad was until a few months ago. Franklin was adopted at age four by a woman named Gertrude, who was 64. She didn't have children, so this meant that he had a very lonely childhood.
"There was never a time I didn't know I was adopted. It was always a framework of who I was," the star says in his 2023 documentary Father's Day: A Kirk Franklin Story, where he shares intimate details about his upbringing and challenging relationship with his mom and son. "I was raised alone; it was horrible," Franklin says in the doccie.
But what is most devastating is finding out after 53 years that his father is still alive and lives down the road from his studio. He has no relationship with his biological mom, and before the documentary, he had not seen her in over 20 years. But it was a rumour that was started in a church at his aunt's funeral that got him to meet his dad.
READ MORE | 'When you adopt a child, you are adopting an entire family' – shifting the adoption story narrative
It was a random moment when his dad mentioned that he had dated Kirk's mother as a kid, and from then on, the rumour spread that he was the father. Throughout his career, Franklin has openly shared his struggles with identity and his tumultuous upbringing.
In 2017, the man his mother said was his dad passed on, and while battling cancer, he got a call that he was dying.
"I buried the man who I thought was my father," he said in the doccie.
When his doctor confirmed the DNA results after his real father was tested, he said, "This man is my father? My momma lied to me again?
"He didn't know he had a son, and I didn't even know I had a father that close. I was that close, that close to having a daddy. I wanted a daddy so bad. Who am I well? Because I have only known me broken."
Franklin says it is still a mystery how everybody knows everybody in a small little neighbourhood, but "this little baby got dropped".
