$900 million in 1992, though it appears that he has given away a considerable poriton of that. Interesting guy and still razor sharp at the age of 88.
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Who Is Sir John Templeton?
Christopher Ruddy
Wednesday, March 21, 2001
NASSAU, Bahamas – "The more we give away," Sir John Templeton once wrote in the New York Times, "the more we have left."
Sir John, as the locals here in the Bahamas call him, is considered one of the world's most respected and successful investment advisers.
An extremely unpretentious and robust man at 88, he says he wants to be remembered not for the great wealth he personally created for himself and others, but rather for his work to unlock the secrets of spirituality and to prove scientifically that faith works.
In 1972, Templeton founded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, which each year awards about $1 million to the person who deepens man's understanding of faith in the physical world.
This year's recipient is Dr. Arthur Peacocke, an Oxford don, physical biochemist and Anglican priest who pioneered early research into the physical chemistry of DNA.
Peacocke's is not a well-known name, but he was awarded the prize for his work as a leading advocate for the creative interaction of theology and science.
Templeton revels in the fact that while some prizewinners such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the Rev. Billy Graham are well known, winners such as Peacocke are little known.
He notes that Mother Teresa of Calcutta won the first Templeton Prize in 1973, years before she became famous and won the Nobel Prize.
Templeton said Mother Teresa was chosen because she exemplified "unlimited love."
This has become his personal quest, and he says he tries "day by day to feel genuine unlimited love for every human being, with never any exception."
He believes that his spiritual exercises, not his market acumen, made him a great financial success. Templeton was born in the small Tennessee town of Winchester in 1912. Through hard work and study, he earned a scholarship to Yale University and became a Rhodes Scholar, an Oxford graduate and member of Phi Beta Kappa.
In 1937, with the nation deep in the Great Depression, Templeton went to work on Wall Street. In just three years he was able to start his own fund management company. In 1954, he founded the Templeton Growth Fund, a mutual fund that has become part of his legacy.
His pioneering concept was to invest globally, an idea that set him apart from his Wall Street colleagues.
Wall Street Week host Louis Rukeyser once called him "one of the authentic heroes of Wall Street."
"At Yale I was investigating what talents God gave me, and where I thought I could be most beneficial to people was to help them make fewer stupid mistakes in selecting their investments," Templeton told Philanthropy magazine. "At age 27 I formed my own investment firm, working with just five wealthy people. Eventually, when I sold out [in 1992], we were helping over a million people with some part of their investments. And I felt that was a ministry, that I was doing a useful job, that I was not wasting the life God gave me. But all during that time, over 50 years, I felt that my benefit to people was not as great as if I were trying to help them get spiritual wealth."
When he sold his funds, they were worth a staggering $80 billion. He walked away with more than $900 million and set about the business of helping people acquire that spiritual wealth.
Templeton said his desire for more spiritual knowledge came about when he noticed that though he helped people create tremendous wealth, it had "no effect. "
"They were happy the day the stock market went up, but it had no common effect on the family. As far as I could see, no common effect on civilization."
Spiritual wealth, Templeton discovered, gives far greater happiness than monetary wealth and creates what he described as a "heaven on earth."
Templeton says his first project was his prize, one he created because he believed that the Nobel Prizes had overlooked one of humanity's most important disciplines, religion.
In 1972 he established the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion as his first step in remedying that omission. Funded in perpetuity by Templeton, the award each year honors an outstanding living individual who has shown extraordinary originality in advancing the world's understanding of God and/or spirituality.
While he is best known for the John Templeton Foundation in Radnor, Pa. (assets $235 million), his two offshore trusts bring the total dedicated to philanthropy to about $800 million.
The foundation has funded research into such topics as the power of prayer to heal and the way forgiveness can have positive results in the physical realm.
In 1995, Templeton's son, Dr. John M. Templeton Jr., left his successful surgical practice to serve full time as president of the foundation.
Recognizing his wide-ranging accomplishments, Queen Elizabeth II knighted the British subject Sir John in 1987. A father of five, he lives on Lyford Cay in Nassau, the Bahamas. Irene, his wife of 35 years, died in 1993. |
