Retiring at 86, He’ll Probably Kick Back and Read the Papers

At 86, Bill Franklin can remember the days when the most scandalous story in town was the murder of one woman by another. But that was back in the teens, when newspapers sold downtown for three cents and the news, he says, “wasn’t forced--it just flowed.”

After 68 years of selling papers, the small man with the shock of white hair locked up his plywood newsstand at 2nd and Spring streets for the last time Thursday and headed home, where he said he and his wife of six weeks, Maria, will enjoy a well-earned retirement.

Weeping and drying his eyes, he talked of all the faces he has seen again and again each day for decades--the harried business people who slowed at his corner long enough to smile, call out “Morning, Bill!” and hustle off to work with a crisp newspaper in hand.

“I’ve met some awfully fine people, famous people, hard-working people--all kinds,” he said.

Daily Ritual

“I’d buy a paper from him every day even though I could get it free (at my office),” said a newspaper reporter who works nearby.

“He once asked me if I was married, because he knew a nice man who wanted to meet someone,” she said.

Franklin started selling papers in 1919 when he was 18, just a block north on 1st Street. He had just arrived in Los Angeles from Newark, N.J., and went into the office of the Los Angeles Times and asked for a stack of papers to sell.

“I came out here all alone to get my start, and I knew I wanted to sell newspapers because they were so exciting,” he said.

“You never know when something big will break. That’s why I always loved it so.”

Franklin reflected for a moment, and then said that he believes the media today is trying too hard to “press the news, you know, force it. That’s why you don’t get the class you used to get. Back then it wasn’t forced--it just flowed.”

In the old days, he said, there was no dominant newspaper, just a lot of smaller papers competing fiercely to relate the news of the day. He has watched the rise and fall of dozens of City Hall politicians, and even of the downtown area itself.

Today, the block where he sold his papers is often frequented by panhandlers from nearby Skid Row, and is sometimes marred by street crime. But Franklin says the downtown area “is just great. I like it. I think it’s wonderful.”

A People Person

People, he says, have always been the most important thing to him, whether they are down on their luck or not.

“I say that the most important person in life is the one that’s close to God,” he said. “I’ve tried to be honest and sincere, you know what I mean, and I’ve made many friends here because of it.”

For many years, he said, a professional man who works a few doors away at the Daily Commerce has given him a lift home, and many others have befriended him as well.

Weeping again, Bill Franklin looked up and down the street, then opened his arms wide as if to embrace the people rushing by.

“Around here I love everyone,” he said. “I’ll miss them all terribly.”