The obituary for Mary Pennington (Updike) Weatherall published by the Local Ne.ws reports that a celebration of her life will be held at First Church in Ipswich, UCC, One Meetinghouse Green, on Saturday, May 5 at 2 p.m. And there is much to celebrate. John Updike Society members know only that she was an artist and a supporter of her first husband, John Updike, who read his drafts and gave him advice, and that she continued to support him after he died by graciously backing the society by contributing to the restoration of The John Updike Childhood Home, participating in two conferences (shown in photo below at the Plowville home with scholar Don Greiner and husband Robert Weatherall), and assisting scholars with their projects.

But there was much more to Mary, as the obituary notes:

In addition to raising her four children and continuing to paint, Mary served on Ipswich’s Fair Housing Committee, “working to ensure that all who wanted to move to, and purchase property in Ipswich, were welcome to do so. She was active in the civil rights movement and, in 1965, flew to Alabama with fellow Ipswich residents, the late Rev. Goldthwaite Sherrill, William Wasserman, and the late Sally Landis Wasserman, to participate in one of the three Selma to Montgomery marches.”

Mary was a local activist as well, working in the 1990s with second husband Robert Weatherall and “the town, the Greenbelt Association, the Nichols family of Essex, and with a substantial monetary contribution of their own, helped make it possible to purchase 10 acres of open meadow above their house. Now known as The Nichols Field, it is an invaluable addition to the open spaces of Ipswich, enjoyed by joggers, dog walkers, fishermen, and romantically inclined teenagers, who walk the mile down Labor-in-Vain Road to enjoy the field overlooking the Ipswich River.”

Mary’s “landscapes of Ipswich, the obituary reports, “were avidly purchased and collected, and a large retrospective of her work was held at the Schlsingler Library at Radcliffe College [her alma mater] in the year 2000.”

Mary, the daughter of Rev. Leslie Talbot Pennington and Elizabeth Entwistle Daniels, a teacher of Latin, was born in Braintree, Mass. on Jan. 26, 1930, and “raised in Cambridge and Chicago,” according to the obituary. “She married John Hoyer Updike on June 26, 1953, and they spent their honeymoon in a small cottage behind the Goodale Apple Orchard on Argilla Road, loaned to them by a family friend.” After living in New York City they moved to Ipswich in 1957 and spent nearly two decades on the North Shore together. Their marriage, which was famously chronicled in The Maples Stories, ended with a “no-fault” divorce in March 1976.

According to the obituary, weeks after celebrating her 88th birthday Mary “caught a bad cold, which in turn led to pneumonia. When they learned of her illness, all seven of her grandsons and a wife, Anoff and Jaime Cobblah, Kwame Cobblah, Wesley Updike, Trevor Updike, Sawyer Updike, Kai Freyleue, and Seneca Freyleue, arrived from various corners of New England to be with her. Her great grandson, Weston Scott Kofi Cobblah, was also there with his parents.

“She is survived by her four children, Elizabeth Cobblah, David Updike, Michael Updike, and Miranda Updike; their spouses, Tete Cobblah, Wambui Githiora Updike, Jeffrey Kern; her three step-children, Robert, Alexander, and Helen Weatherall and their spouses.”

Condolences may be sent by visiting www.whittier-porter.com. In lieu of flowers, contributions in her memory may be made to the Ipswich Refugee Program, P.O. Box 285, Ipswich, MA  01938-9998.

“Mary Pennington Updike Weatherall, 88, an artist and first wife of John Updike” (Boston Globe)

All of us at The John Updike Society were saddened to see the notice that Michael Updike just posted on Facebook that his mother, Mary Pennington (Updike) Weatherall, has died. Mary, John Updike’s first wife and the mother of his four children, was a supporter of the society from the very beginning. She donated money to help us restore the childhood home, donated objects for display that once belonged to Updike, took part in a family panel at the first conference in Reading, Pa., and even welcomed into her home all who attended the second conference in Boston.

We offer our sympathies to the family but share in the feeling of tremendous loss. All who were privileged to meet and spend any time with Mary know how warm and kind and generous she was, and how helpful she has been to Updike scholars over the years. She will be sorely missed, and our hearts go out to her children, Elizabeth Cobblah Updike, David Updike, Michael Updike, and Miranda Updike and their families.

We will post more information as we receive it.

Judith Jones, who retired as senior editor and vice president at Alfred A. Knopf in 2011 after a 54-year career at the fabled publishing house, died Wednesday, August 2, at the age of 93 as a result of complications from Alzheimer’s disease, according to a New York Times story by Robert D. McFadden.

Although Ms. Jones was most famous for discovering Julia Child and co-writing three books of her own with her food-critic husband Evan, devoted readers of John Updike knew her as the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s editor responsible for shepherding “all but one of Mr. Updike’s scores of books of fiction, short stories, poetry and essays to publication.”

Ms. Jones was also responsible for the publication of the American version of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl while she worked in Doubleday’s Paris office prior to joining Knopf. Among her many honors was the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award, named for another writer she edited during her distinguished career at Knopf. While at Knopf Ms. Jones also “commissioned and edited regional and ethic food books for the ‘Knopf Cooks American’ series.” Among other writers she edited were Anne Tyler, John Hersey, Elizabeth Bowen, Peter Taylor, and William Maxwell. But it was her working relationship with Updike, Knopf’s most successful and lauded author, that put her in the conversation of important authors and their equally important editors. One hopes that her correspondence with Updike will one day be published, as the Max Perkins/Ernest Hemingway letters have been, so readers can get a fuller understanding of their working relationship.

The literary world has lost another one of its giants, but she will be appreciated well into the future. Photo: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times.

“Judith Jones, editor of Julia Child, dead at 93” (AP)

“The Side of Judith Jones You Didn’t See” (Food 52)

“Judith Jones got the best out of her authors. I know: I was one of them” (Washington Post)

“Remembering Culinary Giant Judith Jones” (Daily Beast)

It is with great sadness that we report the death of member Larry C. Randen, 75, of Rosemount, Minn. Larry, who died Nov. 4, 2016 from heart disease, was well known in Updike studies, not only for the papers he’s published, but for the years he spent as an assistant editor for The Centaurian, helping editor Jim Yerkes identify publication-worthy items. When The Centaurian ceased publication, he offered his services to The John Updike Society, and with David Lull had been finding newsworthy items for the society webpage since the very beginning.

Larry further demonstrated his dedication to Updike studies by donating his papers to The John Updike Collections of the Alvernia University Archives and Special Collections, assembled by The John Updike Society to further Updike scholarship in the city that meant so much to the author. The Larry C. Randen Collection contains items collected by Larry, including clippings of news reviews, interviews, and other items related to John Updike. While the rest of us were naively thinking that once something was posted online it would always be there, Larry had the foresight to make hard copies of the things that were published in The Centaurian and on the society website, so that even if the server crashes or data is lost (as it was in the case of The Centaurian) those articles are preserved.

Larry was a tremendous asset to the society and a tireless contributor to Updike scholarship. He will be sorely missed, and the society offers condolences to his wife, Lollie; children Christopher and Heidi; Lollie’s children Brian, Amber, and Amanda; sisters Jill and Susan; brother William; AFS Brother Hans; and his grandchildren. We want you all to know how important Larry was to this society and that the work he did lives on, for which we are grateful. Here is the full obituary: larry-c-randen

A Celebration of his Life will be held Tuesday, Nov. 29, between 2-4 p.m. at the Cremation Society of Minnesota, 7110 France Ave. S., Edina, Minn. For more information, call (952) 924-4100.

The literary world has lost another one:  John Mark Eberhart, 52, the former book review editor for The Kansas City Star and the “Book Doctor” on KCUR.

According to a KCUR obituary, Eberhart died today after a long fight with cancer. Eberhart, who earned an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia and a Master’s in English from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, was the book review editor at the Star from 2000 to 2009.

Like so many great and thoughtful book editors, Eberhart had his share of phone interviews and wrote about Updike a number of times. In fact, one of his pieces, “‘Rabbit’ in Retrospect,” will appear in a forthcoming collection of Updike articles and interviews, Native Son: John Updike’s Pennsylvania Interviews—a collection assembled by James Plath that will be published this year by Lehigh University Press. Some wanted money for their reprinted work; Plath said Eberhart was delighted to have one of his pieces on Updike included in a hardcover volume and got the Star to grant permission at no cost. Writing and reading mattered to him the most.

The KCUR obituary says that he took pride in the number of times his byline appeared in the newspaper, and told journalism students in a 2012 article,

“Your writing is something that is going to develop over a long period of time….I’m still learning. Writing is tough and getting better at it takes time. Your progress tends to be incremental, not dramatic. Don’t worry about that, just persevere.”

Eberhart was also a poet, whose work appeared in numerous literary magazines and in two collections, Night Watch (2005) and Broken Time (2008).

We extend our deepest sympathies to his family.

Richard K. Hiester died on Jan. 31, 2016 at the age of 86. Though he was employed for 35 years by Dana Corp. and though he was a U.S. Navy veteran who served during the Korean Conflict, he was perhaps best known in Berks County for his basketball prowess and for his nickname: “Rabbit.” John Updike, three years his junior at Shillington H.S., famously appropriated the nickname in creating his most famous fictional character, Harry Angstrom, the protagonist of four novels and a novella—two of which would win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Memorials can be made to Heartland Hospice, 4 Park Plaza, Wyomissing, PA 19610, or Home Instead Senior Care, 881 Marcon Blvd., Suite 3700, Allentown, PA  18109. Other condolences can be offered on the website of Edward J. Kuhn Funeral Home, www.kuhnfuneralhome.com. The society offers its sincere condolences to his children, Brian D., husband of Kathleen Hiester, Wernersville, and Todd K. Hiester, Sinking Spring, and his grandchildren.

We are saddened to report the sudden death January 18, 2016 of Gerald R. “Gerry” Potts, a  classmate of John Updike’s who was a four-sport athlete at Shillington High School (football, basketball, track, and baseball). He was 85.

Potts, who graduated ahead of Updike and the Class of 1950, kept in touch with Updike later in life, especially after the Reading Eagle published a story naming him as a possible model for Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. Updike sent him a postcard saying, no, he wasn’t, and Potts, who believed in the society’s mission, donated his Updike letters to the Updike archive at Alvernia several years ago.

Potts retired in 1980 but has been an active community member for all of his life, serving on the Shillington Borough Council, the Shillington Zoning and Planning Commission, and the Governor Mifflin School Board, among other organizations.

Here is his obituary. Potts is pictured (left) on his front porch in 2011 with Dave Silcox, Updike’s Shillington contact in whose dining room the first formative meeting of the society took place. The society offers sincere condolences to his wife, Shirley, and children Lori, Richard, and Andrew, all of Shillington.

Services will be 9:30 a.m. at the Edward J. Kuhn Funeral Home, 739 Penn Ave., West Reading. Contributions may be made to Governor Mifflin School District, ℅ Funds for Future Athletic Endeavors, Attn: Pat Tulley, Athletic Director, 10 S. Waverly St., Shillington, PA  19607.

The Society belatedly learned that Kathryn “Kay” Brobst Hartman died on May 24, 2015 in Towanda, Pa., where she lived most of her married life. She was the last surviving teacher that John Updike had as a youth, teaching the young author-to-be reading and science at the 6th grade level. She was 99 years old. Our sympathies (and gratitude for her life) go out to her family.

Funeral announcement

Obituary

The society belatedly learned that member Ann Karnovsky, Ph.D., of Cambridge, Mass., died on Monday, June 23, 2014. Members who attended the 2nd Biennial John Updike Society Conference may recall meeting her, as she attended the event at the Houghton Library and left an impression on a number of us because of how passionate she was about books and manuscripts and Updike in particular. We will miss her. No photo is available.

Here is her obituary, as published in The Boston Globe on June 29, 2014.