A locally compact T 2 {T_2} -space is called a Franklin-Rajagopalan space (or FR-space) provided it has a countable discrete dense subset whose complement is homeomorphic to an ordinal with the order topology. We show that (1) every sequentially compact FR-space X X can be identified with a space constructed from a tower T T on ω ( X = X ( T ) ) \omega \left ( {X = X\left ( T \right )} \right ) , and (2) for an ultrafilter u u on ω \omega , a sequentially compact FR-space X ( T ) X\left ( T \right ) is not u u -compact if and only if there exists an ultrafilter v v on ω \omega such that v ⊃ T v \supset T , and v v is below u u in the Rudin-Keisler order on ω ∗ {\omega ^ * } . As one application of these results we show that in certain models of set theory there exists a family T \mathcal {T} of towers such that | T | > 2 ω \left | \mathcal {T} \right | > {2^\omega } , and ∏ { X ( T ) : T ∈ T } \prod \left \{ {X\left ( T \right ):T \in \mathcal {T}} \right \} is a product of sequentially compact FR-spaces which is not countably compact (a new solution to the Scarborough-Stone problem). As further applications of these results, we give consistent answers to questions of van Douwen, Stephenson, and Vaughan concerning initially m m -chain compact and totally initially m m -compact spaces.