A look at the portrayers of the Revolution's heroes

Bill Robling leaned on his eagle-headed walking stick in front of his office in the Historic Philadelphia Center.

He wore summer business attire: linen frock coat and cream-colored cravat. Tricorn hat. Bifocals, of course.

Robling is Ben Franklin. His office a canvas theatrical set. A quill pen. A writing table. A kite near the windowsill.

"Goodness, welcome," he greeted the Cyruliks, a family of six from Mount Pulaski, Ill.

"Oh, here, why don't you stand with Benjamin?" Angie Cyrulik asked, corralling her triplets.

The Cyruliks will be just one of thousands of families Robling greets this July 4 during the High Holy Week of Philadelphia historical reenactment.

"It's like being in the North Pole and we're Santa's elves," said Heather Kincade, a spokeswoman for Historic Philadelphia, which runs the Revolutionary-themed Once Upon a Nation programming at the center of this weekend's historic district celebrations.

And Robling, as Franklin, and his colleagues, who portray Betsy Ross and Thomas Jefferson and other heroes from those fevered days of rebellion, will be at the heart of it all.

There is Ken Sandberg, 30, an up-and-coming actor who has performed in the Historic Philadelphia cast for eight seasons and who will soon leave his role as Thomas Jefferson behind for graduate school.

He will miss it, he said, during a storytelling break outside Carpenters Hall. He has striven to portray Jefferson as Jefferson was, a man of striking contradictions: the high-minded idealist who wrote "All men are created equal." The slave owner who could not quite abide by those ideals.

And though he has read it aloud, or heard it read, hundreds, if not thousands, of times, Sandberg still gets chills from Mr. Jefferson's Declaration.

There is Jess Brownell, 31, a former analytical chemist originally from Colorado who left the corporate world behind for the theater and now lives in South Philly. She is in her fourth season of portraying Betsy Ross.

She, too, takes her job seriously - the job of honoring Betsy. A working-class mother, twice widowed, who struggled through the war years, but still, according to historic accounts, loved to laugh.

"Details like that - that make her human - is really what I love learning," Brownell said, in between her performances in the upholstery shop at the Betsy Ross House.

And it plays great at parties.

"People think it's pretty cool - they're like, 'No way you're Betsy,' " she said.

And there is Robling.

He will spend his weekend posing for photos, dispensing adages, and reenacting scenes from the throes of the revolution. And, like the others, you won't hear him complain too much about the endless flow of tourists and long hours this weekend. To him, being Ben Franklin is no grind, but a calling.

When he is Ben Franklin, his goal is to be Ben Franklin.

"From the inside out," he said.

He studies constantly. And with Franklin - the great statesman, inventor, and founder of just about everything in Philadelphia - there is always more to learn, he said.

"A comprehensive life," he said, clicking his walking stick.

What he admires most about Franklin is his curiosity.

"His greatest invention was always reinventing himself," Robling said.

That's something Robling himself knows about.

Before finding professional happiness as Franklin, Robling worked a string of unfulfilling jobs - for decades. Retail and restaurants. The postal service. He acted when he could. Musical theater in Jersey. An opera company in South Philly. He did some nightclub singing.

And then he was 57 years old, and desperate.

"Desperate in the sense that I had known for some time that this was the sort of thing that I needed to be doing," he said. "And that I could not wait to be able to do it."

He joined an 18th-century-themed a cappella group, the Liberty Tones. Someone suggested character work. Franklin. That was 13 years ago. He never looked back.

He portrays a man famous for his aphorisms, but he has formed his own from years of hard experience, he said.

His best advice? "Figure out who you are as soon as you can, and be that person."

Bill Robling is Ben Franklin.

215-854-2759@MikeNewall