Julius Cole Rassin was a gifted guitarist, songwriter, and performer from Wilmington, North Carolina. He started playing music at 8 years old, posted original songs on YouTube, performed downtown Wilmington for anyone who would listen, and once moved to LA to pursue a boy band dream.

Known to family and close friends as Julius Cole; to many others, especially in his later years, as Julius. We use Julius Cole here so both names find him.

In 2016, Julius Cole was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a chronic condition combining symptoms of schizophrenia with mood disorder episodes. He sought solace in his music but tragically never found the therapeutic outlet he desperately needed following his diagnosis.

In his own video description for a song called Beautiful, he said he wrote it “for anyone who’s down on themselves and needs to be cheered up and know that they’re beautiful because they are who they are.”

Julius Cole passed away in February 2018 at just 22 years old. In the months that followed, his parents, Mary Belle Jones and Steve Rassin, entrusted six of his unfinished songs to his friend Hannah Kol, a Nashville-based singer-songwriter. She carried them into a Nashville studio and brought them to life as the album Sunny Day. That October, at a release party held at The Annex at The Brooklyn Arts Center in Wilmington, Music Heals Minds was introduced to the community.

Every guitar we donate, every therapist we fund, every instrument placed in a rehab hospital or SHORE program classroom, carries his name. The songs on his channel are still there. The ones Hannah finished are still playing.

He wrote for everyone broken and lost at some point.