By Dennis Jamison ——Bio and Archives--January 17, 2024

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Today is the birthday of one of the most important Founding Fathers who possibly could have served as the unofficial president of the United States. Sadly, Americans have never honored this man as they have done for others who have measured up as less remarkable.

Benjamin Franklin once wrote that “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worthy of reading, or do things worth the writing.” Franklin did both, but unfortunately he is not often easily remembered for all of the incredible things he did or for the words of wisdom he left for posterity.

In his own time, Benjamin Franklin was recognized as a Renaissance Man. He was born into a humble and large family on January 17, 1706. Young Franklin got his initial start in life as a printer in his brother’s print shop and newspaper in Boston. This foundation served as a basis for his industriousness and provided a livelihood that served him well many times throughout his younger years. But, he eventually outgrew such an early beginning, and he developed and became a colonial Renaissance Man, as he became an entrepreneur and a businessman, a meteorologist, a scientist and inventor, a musician, a librarian, a humorist, an economist, a philanthropist, a philosopher, and a diplomat and statesman.

To Walter Isaacson, whose exhaustive biography of Benjamin Franklin was published in 2003, Franklin stood out as “the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become.” Amazingly, during the time of such an incredible career, he never lost pride in his working class roots, nor his desire........

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