How a daughter turned her mother's decline into the impressive Sundance short 'Sundowners'
The writer Robert Greenfield is one of my oldest friends, someone who's made me laugh and made me think for more than 50 years. Five years ago, something terrible happened to him and his family. Now, in its wake, comes a poignant and wonderful event.
Bob's vibrant wife, Donna Franz, a legendary disc jockey on Carmel's KLRB who was the first to play the then-unknown Dire Straits on American radio (and has the gold record presented to her by the group to prove it), was diagnosed five years ago with progressive aphasia.
That meant first a shocking loss of speech. Then reading, writing and other cognitive skills began to disappear, an out-of-nowhere, early onset of dementia that devastated the family.
Cut to today. Bob and Donna's daughter Anna Greenfield, collaborating with her close friends Jessy Hodges and Lisa Steen, has made a first-rate, nine-minute dramatic film, both moving and
