Admirers wish Ben Franklin a happy 305th birthday

On Friday, about a hundred people in trench coats and earmuffs walked from the library of the American Philosophical Society at Fifth and Chestnut Streets to the grave of Benjamin Franklin at Christ Church Burial Ground, braving the cold to celebrate the birthday of the founding father.

It was Birthday 305.

Since it began in 2006, the annual celebration usually has occurred on the Friday before Franklin's birth date of Jan. 17, but this year it happened a week later to accommodate the recipient of the Franklin Founder award, former Gov. Ed Rendell. The award is given by Celebrate! Benjamin Franklin, Founder, a collaborative group of Franklin-related organizations.

Other than Rendell, who spoke at a private, post-procession luncheon, the guest of honor was Franklin himself, portrayed as usual by 69-year-old impersonator Ralph Archbold. Wispy-haired and bespectacled, though not as paunchy as before (following a stroke in 2009), he led the crowd at the burial grounds in three rounds of "hip, hip, huzzah!"

Don Smith, chairman of the celebration committee, said at the cemetery at Fifth and Arch Street that Franklin would have enjoyed Friday's weather. He liked the cold and slept with his windows open, which was considered a healthy practice in his time.

Managing Director Richard Negrin said Franklin "personified the spirit of working-class Philadelphia." He later laid a wreath on Franklin's grave. A representative from Bartram's Garden, the nation's oldest botanical garden, also set down a few branches from a Franklinia, a robust tree named for the statesman in 1784 by William Bartram.

The event made clear that Franklin, who was born in 1706 and died in 1790, means something different to everyone. For Smith, he was someone who reduced contentiousness between political parties, "somebody who could bring people together."

Retired U.S. Circuit Judge Arlin M. Adams called himself an "avid admirer" of Franklin. "Nobody in our society has had as broad a range of accomplishments," he said.

And the pastor of Christ Church, the Rev. Timothy B. Safford, said he takes from Franklin the capacity to change and improve over one's lifetime, noting that Franklin when young was a slaveholder but ended up as president of the Pennsylvania Abolitionist Society.

"We make a mistake when we create him into too mythic of a character," he said. "He was a real human being. . . . He had clay feet. And, like all of us, we measure him by the entirety of his life and no one particular moment."