When the Updikes moved to the Plowville farm, they sold the Shillington house at 117 Philadelphia Avenue to Dr. John and Mrs. Grace Hunter, who lived there with their family for nearly 45 years. The doctor added a single-story attached annex to use as his office, so his practice and his family life were both connected to the site. In fact, a lighted screen for reading x-rays is still on the wall in one of his former examination rooms. The John Updike Society hopes to preserve that as a reminder of the building’s rich heritage, and also to preserve the doctor’s office, with its built-in bookshelves, to be used as a gift shop.

Today Bruce R. Posten posted a story at the Reading Eagle about Mrs. Hunter:  “Updike’s Home in Shillington was also hers.”

Mrs. Hunter is a gracious and generous woman who last October spent an hour talking with society president James Plath and curator Maria Mogford about the house. Her memories of the way the house looked when they first moved in provided information that will prove invaluable when the restoration begins later this spring. One example? Plans were to tear out bookcases that were added to the living room after the Hunters took possession of the house. But when Mrs. Hunter told us that it was in those bookcases where her husband kept a near-complete set of Updike’s works and that Updike signed all of the books for him, taking them down one at a time, those bookcases now seem best left intact and refilled with copies of Updike’s books, so visitors can sit in the living room and peruse them. Mrs. Hunter was also kind enough to give us a file of newspaper and magazine clippings about Updike, some of which will be displayed at the house, and some of which will be stored in the John Updike Society Archive at Alvernia University.