Templeton memorial held at University Chapel

Though he was not affiliated with the University, Templeton was connected to Princeton through the Princeton Theological Seminary, for which he served as a trustee for 42 years, 12 of those as chair of the board. The two-hour service commemorated the life of a man described as a scholar, investor, visionary and philanthropist.

“He always believed that truth existed, that we can learn from the past,” his son, John Templeton, Jr., said in an interview. “He also felt that God gave us our minds to learn more about truth.”

Princeton Theological Seminary president the Very Rev. Dr. Iain Torrance said during the memorial, “Templeton served the church in ways that not even he could see.”

Born in 1912, the Tennessee native attended Yale and then Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. He is best known for founding the Templeton Mutual Fund line of investment products and for establishing the Templeton Foundation in 1987. The Templeton funds were sold to the Franklin Group in 1992, and Templeton’s son now runs the foundation.

The foundation, whose mission, according to its website, is “to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discovery in areas engaging life’s biggest questions,” gives grants to research on “the laws of nature and the universe to questions on the nature of love, gratitude, forgiveness, and creativity.” Some have criticized the foundation for favoring conservative and religious causes.

Others have made claims against Templeton’s personal character, citing his move to the Bahamas. A forbes.com article noted that Templeton is one of a “handful of rich folks … able to escape U.S. income and estate taxes by renouncing their citizenship.” Those at the memorial service who knew him well, however, said otherwise.

“It’s easy to say about people who move away from the United States and then accumulate great wealth that they did it for tax reasons,” Pamela Thompson, a John Templeton Foundation staff member, said in an interview. “He didn’t have [great wealth] when he went to the Bahamas. [He] wanted to live there because it was beautiful. He would tell you that the taxes for living in the Bahamas are certainly not inexpensive. It’s just something that people have said, but it’s not true.”

Thompson pointed out that Templeton started his foundation in the United States, though he could have chosen another country.

John Donelik, a fellow trustee on the board of the Princeton Theological Seminary, explained that Templeton’s move to the Bahamas benefited his business.

“Interestingly, Sir John later credited his … success to the move, because distance removed him from the ‘herd mentality’ of Wall Street where investment managers tend to buy the same securities,” Donelik said in an e-mail. “Brokerage houses were not going to send sales people to the Bahamas to make a pitch to Sir John!”

Templeton, Jr., said that while his father said in retrospect that the move helped him make better investment decisions, the Bahamas’ atmosphere was most agreeable to him.

“He researched lots of places to move to, and he discovered that the basic culture in the Bahamas had a very strong belief in God, and he felt the culture was the kind of atmosphere he wanted to live in,” his son said, adding that the tax evasion accusations made against his father were “not true, first[ly], but secondly irrelevant to the larger things that he tried to leave behind.”

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Though Templeton became wealthy, he remained thrifty, speakers at the memorial, said.

“Probably up until not more than 15 years ago, every car he ever bought was a used car,” Templeton, Jr., said. “He always liked value, but if he saw there was a bankruptcy sale where people were irresponsible … then he would go to those sales and buy a good car.”

Others noted that Templeton always flew coach.

Though he died a billionaire, Templeton did not come from a wealthy family. As a young boy, he was determined to attend Yale and taught himself advanced algebra and trigonometry to help him achieve his goal. Shortly before the beginning of his sophomore year at Yale, Templeton’s father said that he could no longer contribute financially to his education, so Templeton worked three part-time jobs to pay his way.

Thompson later noted that Templeton “was so pleased to be able to provide people with financial wealth, but he was excited to be able to help them with spiritual wealth.”