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The globe-trotting retiree

By ROBERT N. JENKINS
Published June 27, 2006

Of course, the fellow credited with coming up with that advice retired awfully rich, at the age of 42. And he made money the old-fashioned way: He earned it.

Consider Ben Franklin, America's first famous retiree.

This year is the 300th anniversary of his birth. Though he was born in Boston, the 10th son among what would be 15 children, Franklin would make his fame - and considerable fortune - in Philadelphia.

As a teenager, Ben had been apprenticed by his father to his brother James, a printer. The brothers were successful, but James was jealous of Ben's intellect and writing ability and used to beat his brother.

Ben, just 17, got himself on a boat to New York and, when he couldn't find work there as a printer, walked across New Jersey and into Philadelphia.

That city was based on the principle of religious freedom. But founder William Penn had the foresight to be generous with gifts of land to merchants who could help the city grow and take advantage of its river access to the sea.

Soon after arriving, penniless, in Philadelphia, Franklin was hired as a printer. He was so industrious and adept that the governor of the colony asked him to sail to England to purchase advanced printing supplies. Franklin was just 18.

But the governor failed to supply letters of introduction he had promised, so the teenager again hired himself on as a printer, in London.

The young man involved himself with the intellectuals he could meet, went to plays and wrote a pamphlet - in those days, the equivalent of talk radio and a book club combined.

Two years later he borrowed the money from a Philadelphian to return there. By 1728, and just 22, Franklin formed a printing firm, created an intellectual discussion group and wrote more pamphlets. By the time he was 24, Franklin had bought a newspaper and was hired as the colony's official printer.

By 1730, Philadelphia was so prosperous that it was larger than New York or Boston.

A few days before his 27th birthday, he wrote and published the first edition of Poor Richard's Almanack.

His career took off: He organized a firefighting company, became the official printer for both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as postmaster for Philadelphia, the largest city in the colonies.

Renaissance man that he was, Franklin made time to lead a protest against industrial pollution and also to invent the Franklin stove. Because he believed the stove should benefit everyone, he refused to take out a patent on it, thereby keeping its cost lower.

By the time he was 40, he had written a paper that became the basis for the American Philosophical Society and was perhaps the world's leading researcher on the nature of electricity.

He also was independently wealthy, at a time when only Europe's landed gentry had the luxury to not have to work.

"To pursue his interests in science and politics," says historian Edward Mauger, "Ben decided to join what he called the 'free and easy society.' "

At the age of 42, "Franklin turned over his booming printing business to his junior partner, in exchange for an annuity to bankroll his retirement years," Mauger said, as he led me through the red-brick gentility that marks the Society Hill neighborhood.

"One of Ben's only miscalculations: It never occurred to him that he would live for an additional 42 years, so the annuity expired before he did." Franklin by then was living in a house he owned and shared with one of his children and six of his grandchildren, and was living on his savings.

About 12 years ago, Mauger pronounced MAY-jor took early retirement from his job as associate dean at the Rutgers University campus in Camden, N.J., immediately across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.

He had been a volunteer leader of architectural tours here, so he decided to turn his fascination with the city's rich history into his own post-retirement career.

As we strolled the old sidewalks fronting some of the city's 2,000 or so Colonial-era buildings, Mauger continued to recount Franklin's life as a retiree:

"He conducted careful, logical experiments" on electricity. "The terms positive, negative, battery and electrician are all credited to him."

Franklin was also "a physical fitness buff . . . he practiced a vegetarian lifestyle, swam up to two hours a day and had made a point of carrying as much as 200 pounds of lead type, at a time, in his print shop . . .

"Even in his 70s, living in Paris, Franklin jumped into the River Seine to teach his grandson how to swim." Franklin is in the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

During his years in London and Paris, Franklin became a devotee of music. He loved to sing with a club he created, and he also appreciated classical music. He was proficient on the guitar, and in his 50s he invented an instrument he named the glass armonica, for which Mozart and Beethoven composed works. At the age of 80 Franklin was playing duets on it.

He was a great statesman, sent to represent the Colonies overseas. He also was one of five men who composed the Declaration of Independence, and later he negotiated the peace treaty with England that ended the Revolution. At the age of 81, he signed the U.S. Constitution.

In tune with the topic of this month's Seniority, "Franklin made at least six trans-Atlantic voyages after he reached the age of 50," said Mauger. Not one to waste time, the Great Man would conduct experiments on the path of the Gulf Stream, which he is credited with discovering.

Though not what we consider physically attractive, Franklin was "still romantically active into his 80s, flirting and writing love letters . . .

"He was brilliant, famous and immensely charming . . . Beautiful women were attracted by Ben's fame and his readiness to give them his undivided attention, at a time when women were rarely permitted to speak in public."

All in all, the sort of successful retirement we all could contemplate.

Robert N. Jenkins can be reached at (727) 893-8496 or jenkins@sptimes.com.

To book your own walking tour with Ed Mauger's Philadelphia on Foot:

nwww.ushistory.org/more/mauger/index.htm.

To learn more about Franklin:

nwww.USHistory.org/Franklin.

--For more on Philadelphia and senior discounts: www.gophila.com.

[Last modified June 27, 2006, 06:55:19]