This is Frank Romano for WhatTheyThink.com.  I’m here in a graveyard.  It is the Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia.  It is the place where Benjamin Franklin is buried.  Here we’re coming toward his grave, by the way.  He and his wife, Deborah, are buried here.  His only daughter, Sarah, is buried right next to them.  People come from all over the world.  Some of them look through the fence and some pay the $2.00 to come inside.  Notice all the coins that are on his grave.  People throw them on there for good luck.  One night I was coming back from a speech and it was quite late, and I heard these coins jingling.  And I looked inside the fence and someone had climbed over it and were taking the coins.  I’m not sure Ben would have been unhappy about that.  This is the epitaph that he wrote for himself:

The body of

B. Franklin, Printer,

Like the Cover of an Old Book,

Its Contents torn out,

And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding,

Lies here, Food for Worms.

But the Work shall not be lost;

For it will as he believ'd

appear once more

In a new and more elegant Edition

Corrected and improved

By the Author.

Near a quiet little spot in the corner, but the traffic is the thing that creates all the noise.  The Constitution Pole is right over there and we’re in the very historic area where you have many of the landmarks of the American Revolution.  Four of the signers of the Declaration of Independence are here in this graveyard.  It’s a beautiful day in November.  When you’re seeing this it’s probably going to be somewhere in the spring.  I’ve always found Ben Franklin to be one of my personal heroes, not because he was a printer, by the way, but because he did so many things.  He was a businessman.  Printing was his business and he used that business in order to create wealth.  And he was able to take that money and improve the lives of many people.  

In fact, most people don’t know that he left money to the Cities of Philadelphia and Boston, a sum to accumulate interest for a hundred years and to be used for the education of the youth of the city.  He died in 1790.  In 1890, there was close to a million dollars in both accounts, both built the Franklin Institute.  One became a school, the other became a museum.  By the way, they put more money back into the bank and let it go for another hundred years and there was another million or so dollars left.  Unfortunately, the City of Boston said it was their money and they put it into the general coffer.  Philadelphia decided to have a party with the money and they hired Ben Vereen and Aretha Franklin—Ben Franklin, if you will.  So his money was still affecting people 200 years after he died.  

He franchised printing.  He trained young men to be printers in various parts of the United States and got a percentage of it.  He was a publisher, not only newspapers, but almanacs and books and other things, which is why he was so dedicated as the Postmaster, First Postmaster, if you will, because he needed assistance for distributing all this printed material that he produced.  At 45, he was able to retire, a relatively wealthy person.  He dedicated his life to science and to politics.  In politics, he learned how to do it.  He didn’t start out that way.  But he was responsible for signing the three documents that created America—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Treaty of Paris.  So he was a printer and, of course, that’s why it’s on this particular website.  But again, a hero for a person that really made a difference in his life and other lives.

And this is Frank Romano and that’s my opinion.