Frank Albin Hanson Jr. was 15 when he vanished from Cranston, Rhode Island, on July 12, 1947. He raced and won at the Edgewood Yacht Club that afternoon and was expected at the evening awards ceremony, but his mother had told him to come straight home. The last confirmed sighting came about 7 p.m. when he stopped at a local store where a friend was working and said they might see each other the next day.

Officers and family searched immediately. Police followed Frank’s scent to an abandoned railway trestle near the Pawtuxet River, a shortcut he frequently used. There were early theories he might have fallen and drowned, and several people reported seeing a body in the river in the days afterward, but no body was ever recovered. Frank was described as a good student with no known problems at home; he had not indicated any plan to run away, though he sometimes hitchhiked without his parents’ knowledge.

A memorial bench was placed near his parents’ grave in 2023, but the circumstances of his disappearance remain unsolved. Did anyone in the area remember seeing Frank that evening or have information about the railway trestle shortcut?