I-8 Jewish travel: The reclusive bibliophile

 

Benjamin LIbrary entrance on Zion Avenue
Benjamin LIbrary entrance on Zion Avenue

–23rd in a series–

Exit 9, Waring Road, San Diego ~ Benjamin Branch Library

By Donald H. Harrison

Donald H. Harrison
Donald H. Harrison

benjamin plaqueSAN DIEGO – At this point I still can’t tell whether the tale of the reclusive bibliophile who only came to the public’s attention after he died, very much alone, is a “Jewish story” or not.  As the man in question, Edwin Arthur Benjamin, is the namesake of the city’s Benjamin branch library, I suppose if it turns out he was not Jewish, we could always fall back upon the fact that the library is located at the corner of Waring Road and Zion Avenue to claim our Jewish story.

There’s divided opinion about whether Benjamin was Jewish, or perhaps the son of a Jewish father, or perhaps simply someone bearing the surname of one of the 12 Jewish tribes.  The records that I’ve searched don’t tell his religion, and he certainly didn’t make that fact about himself generally known, since recluses in any event don’t talk much about themselves.   Census records report that his father was born in England, and his mother, Martha Phelps, in New York.

Calvin Metz, a Christian friend of Benjamin’s, might have been able to tell us all about the bibliophile, but Metz is also dead.  One of Metz’s daughters, Kathryn, who used to call Benjamin “Uncle Ed,” told me in a telephone interview from Loma Linda, California, that Benjamin didn’t practice any religion, but rather had been an atheist.  However, she added, it’s possible that his father, H.R. Benjamin, who served as a doctor in an Iowa regiment in the Civil War, had been Jewish.  Kathryn simply was unable to say one way or the other.

Edwin Arthur Benjamin, born in 1875, was discovered dead in his North Park home near 30th Street in August 1963 while the Metzes were away from the city on vacation. Kathryn, who grew up to be a school teacher, doesn’t recall if she ever was told where he was buried, or if his body was disposed of by some other means.  One of the items she received from his estate was his family Bible—which included both the Old and New Testaments—but the fact that he was in possession of Christian Scriptures doesn’t really answer the question of his religious/ ethnic background.  On my own reference shelf is a King James version of the Bible in addition to the Stone version of the Tanakh and the Plaut Torah commentary.

How the Metzes came to be friends with Benjamin, who socialized with practically no one else, was a matter of serendipity.  While a pupil in public school, Kathryn went door to door to collect for the neighborhood Bookmobile.  Benjamin, for whom books was a passion, contributed a few from his collection, which Kathryn later learned was quite extensive, perhaps as many as 10,000 volumes, all carefully bound.

“His whole house was lined with custom-made book shelves,” she recalled.  “I remember some of them were signed first editions of Mark Twain’s.  He also had an extensive collection about Lincoln.”

Benjamin Branch LIbrary interior
Benjamin Branch Library interior

It wasn’t the book collection—which she said was donated to the public library—that resulted in the distribution across the country of a UPI news story about his demise.  It was the fact that this urban hermit left an unsolicited $500,000 gift to the City of San Diego to be used for library purposes.  Today, $500,000 may not sound like that much, but it was an astounding amount of money back in 1963, especially to have been accumulated by someone who lived so far beneath the general public’s radar.

Benjamin’s chance encounter with Kathryn led to a friendship with her father Calvin, a fellow lover of books, who was the principal of Pepper Drive Elementary School in El Cajon.  Metz was a highly regarded educator, even being among a group to receive awards at the White House, his daughter reported.

The Metzes moved from their home in North Park to another home in Allied Gardens, which is the neighborhood in San Diego where the Benjamin branch library is located.  Even so, they kept in close touch with Benjamin—which wasn’t always easy—because he refused to have a telephone that might disturb his solitude.  Nor did he have a refrigerator—another one of them newfangled devices.

Kathryn said that for companionship Benjamin had his beloved cat, Rusty, and additionally engaged in fairly frequent business discussions with his stockbroker, who helped him invest in the Melville Corporation which eventually morphed into the CVS drugstores.

When it came to socializing, the Metzes were just about his only friends.  “He would come over on holidays, and on Sundays for dinner,” Kathryn remembered.  He helped to develop Kathryn’s love of literature.  She recalled fondly that he gave her the Lady of the Lake poem from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King.

Calvin Metz was among those who called for the Allied Gardens branch library to be named after Benjamin.  The city did so, utilizing some of his bequest to build the Benjamin Branch Library, which opened. March 22, 1965. The Benjamin branch marked 2015 as its golden anniversary.  Meanwhile, the city had outside consultants invest the corpus of Benjamin’s bequest, so that in 2015, even after various withdrawals to build or improve other branch libraries, the fund still amounted to more than $1.2 million.

Two withdrawals from the fund came in 1986.  These were $55,000 for design and construction of a Point Loma branch library expansion, and $130,000 for land acquisition and expansion of the North Park library.   In 1994, another $200,000 was taken from the fund to be put toward construction of the Rancho Bernardo branch library.

Metz, who became an unofficial watchdog of the fund, considered these appropriate uses of the money left to the city by his old friend.   But he balked at an effort in 1985 to use money from the fund to pay for a computer system to help the library in its fundraising.

After Metz testified on the matter, the San Diego City Council directed the City Manager to find money for the computer system from some other place.

Computers—the very idea would have been abhorrent to an old bibliophile who didn’t even like such devices as telephones or refrigerators!

Next: Young Israel of San Diego

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com, or your comment may be posted on this website, provided that the rules below are observed.

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