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McPhees, PECO Foundation honored for Updike house support
Roemer and Constance McPhee, whose support helped The John Updike Society to go all out and hire a historic restoration specialist to bring The John Updike Childhood Home in Shillington, Pa. back to the way it was when Updike lived there from “age zero to 13,” have received the society’s Distinguished Service Award.
In presenting the award at the society’s business meeting on Thursday, May 25, at the Westin Copley Place Hotel in Boston, society president James Plath recalled a phone call he received in December 2012 from “a man named Roemer McPhee, who told me he’d read about our efforts to turn The John Updike Childhood Home into a museum and wanted to help by sending us a check for $3000.” McPhee was a big John Updike fan and thought it was a perfect opportunity to give the writer his due.
Since that first donation, H. Roemer McPhee III—an author himself (The Boomer’s Guide to Story: A Search for Insight in Literature and Film) and a New York investor who studied at Princeton and the Wharton Graduate School of Business—has demonstrated his love of Updike by driving to Shillington to tour the house and Updike sites with his mother and later attended the Third Biennial John Updike Society Conference in Reading, Pa. with his wife and co-benefactor, Connie. Through their PECO Foundation, Roemer and Connie have contributed more than $70,000 over the years to help with the restoration, making them the second largest donor, behind the Robert and Adele Schiff Family Foundation, whose initial donation enabled the society to purchase the home. With some work still outstanding and museum display cases needed, the McPhees have also pledged additional help and said they are considering joining society members in Belgrade, Serbia for the Fifth Biennial John Updike Society Conference in June 2018.
“It’s fairly common to find foundations that care enough about a cause to donate money,” Plath said, “but to have the people behind those organizations also become involved on a personal level and to be so knowledgeable about Updike that they can discuss texts such as the Rabbit novels with members, that’s highly unusual, and it underscores the impact that Updike had as a writer.”
Because of their shared love of John Updike and his works, and because of the passion they’ve shown and the impact they’ve had in helping the society to fulfill its mission, the board of directors of The John Updike Society unanimously voted to award Roemer and Constance McPhee the society’s Distinguished Service Award, Plath said.
Over the nine years that The John Updike Society has been in existence, the society has given Distinguished Service Awards to James Yerkes, for his important contributions to Updike scholarship through The Centaurian print and online newsletter; Conrad Vanino, whose pro bono work as realtor helped the society acquire The John Updike Childhood Home and who continues to act as the society’s agent; and The Robert and Adele Schiff Family Foundation, whose generous support enabled the purchase and restoration of The John Updike Childhood Home.
Roemer McPhee’s most recent book is Killing the Market: Legendary Investor Robert W. Wilson.
Help the John Updike Society, shop Amazon Smile
It doesn’t sound like much—just .5 percent of every purchase you make—but it adds up. And it doesn’t cost you anything extra. Amazon makes a donation to the charity of your choice if you shop using the Amazon Smile url (which takes you to the Amazon site). It’s virtually the same shopping experience except that by going through Amazon Smile you help your favorite non-profit while you shop. And the set-up is one-time, easy, and intuitive. To start helping The John Updike Society now, go to:
http://smile.amazon.com/ch/45-1584125
De Bellis featured in WDIY interview
John Updike Society cofounder and former director Jack De Bellis, whose John Updike Encyclopedia and John Updike’s Early Years have been indispensable for Updike scholars, was featured in an interview on WDIY, Lehigh Valley’s Community NPR Station, on Dec. 6, 2016.
Asking the questions was Lehigh Valley Discourse host John Pearce.
Here’s the audio link.
Portion of Amazon.com purchases to benefit John Updike Society
If you shop Amazon.com, you can help the John Updike Society by changing your bookmark from amazon.com to smile.amazon.com so that all orders go through the “smile” url. Amazon will donate .5 percent of eligible purchases directly to the Society.
Once you designate the John Updike Society as your charity, bookmark the page and every time you buy something through Amazon you will go through the smile program and .5 percent will automatically go to our non-profit organization. The prices are no different, and it’s no more difficult to shop through the smile portal than through amazon.com. It’s just their way of tracking donations.
Spread the word. Point 5 percent might not sound like a lot, but it adds up, and every little bit helps when we’re in the midst of restoring The John Updike Childhood Home and turning it into a museum.
Updike Society receives huge collection of Updike publications
Kevin Schehr, a charter member of The John Updike Society, has arranged for his extensive Updike collection to be donated to the society. The collection, last appraised at $80,000, includes first editions of all of Updike’s books (many signed, including Franklin Library editions), uncorrected proof copies, broadsides, limited editions, books about Updike, books containing contributions by Updike, and over 1600 periodicals featuring first appearances of writings by Updike or about Updike.
“This is a huge gift to the society,” president James Plath said. “It ensures that visitors to The John Updike Childhood Home at any given time in the future will see a number of first editions, which we’ll rotate in order to minimize their exposure to light. The first appearances in magazines will be especially interesting for Updike fans, because few of us have seen them when they first appeared in print.”
Schehr is currently in his fourth elected term as the Associate Circuit Judge for Morgan County, Missouri. He handles all cases filed in Morgan County, including civil actions, dissolutions of marriage, probate, and all criminal misdemeanor cases, as well as all felonies until the preliminary hearing has been held. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, he got his first exposure to Updike at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind., when part of his senior year comprehensive exam required him to “explicate the short story ‘A & P.’ I thought I had found the next J.D. Salinger from reading that story,” he said. Then, “When I went to graduate school as a teaching assistant at the University of Missouri I was assigned Updike’s Rabbit, Run in one of my classes for my Master’s Degree. Later, upon joining The Book of the Month Club I used three of my four free selections to obtain the Rabbit books (there were only three then). That led to wanting to get true first editions of the books and my collecting bug took off from there. It started around 1982 and lasted until Updike’s death in 2009.”
Schehr said he initially donated the collection to his alma mater, Wabash College, but when he inquired about it recently he discovered that the materials were not considered a priority. As a result, he asked the college if they would consider re-donating the collection to The John Updike Society, and they were willing. Plath will pick up the exhaustive collection and drive it to Shillington sometime in mid-May 2016.
“I did get to meet Updike once when he was a dinner guest and gave a reading at the University of Missouri,” Schehr said. “I had dinner a few tables away from him, but did not approach him at that time. Later, after the reading, he was signing autographs and I waited my turn. When I got my chance I handed him my first edition copy of his first book to sign. He gave it a puzzled look, as if he were surprised that anyone would have a copy, and then, after asking for my name inscribed it ‘to Kevin, this very old book, cheers, John Updike.’ I left with a big smile on my face.”
The John Updike Society is grateful to Judge Schehr for assembling the collection and to Wabash College for re-gifting it.
Society gets its first U.S.-based lifetime benefactor
John Updike Society member Lang Zimmerman, whom society members may have met at the most recent conference in Reading, Pa., has become the first U.S.-based lifetime benefactor. Zimmerman is vice president of Yelcot, a family-owned communications company based in Mountain Home, Arkansas, and is also commissioner for the Arkansas Economic Development Commission. In a note he added that his donation was written, appropriately, using a pen made from Updike’s dogwood tree.
The new dues structure announced in August included options to become a lifetime member ($500) and a lifetime benefactor ($1000). So far no one has chosen to become a lifetime member, but Zimmerman now joins Takashi Nakatani as the society’s lifetime benefactors.
JUS reports its first lifetime benefactor
The new dues structure taking effect on January 1, 2016 includes a lifetime membership ($500) and lifetime benefactor membership ($1000). With The John Updike Childhood Home restoration in progress, the timing couldn’t be better for members to take advantage of these options and help the museum project move forward at the same time.
Professor Takashi Nakatani, of Yokohama City University, Japan, has generously stepped forward to become the first lifetime benefactor. Professor Nakatani has been an active member of the society since the beginning, moderating a panel at the First Biennial Conference at Alvernia and presenting papers at the Second Biennial Conference at Suffolk and the Third Biennial Conference at Alvernia. He has also taken several research trips on his own to Updike collections in Boston and Reading.
At the 3rd Biennial Conference pre-conference social (l to r): Yue Wang, James Plath, Carla Alexandra Ferreira, and Takashi Nakatani.
Updike poem read on Serbian state TV
John Updike Society board member Biljana Dojčinović was featured on RTS (Radio Television of Serbia) in a program of culture titled “Metropolis,” about Sylvia Plath.
In it, around the 28-minute mark, she reads (in her Serbian translation) the beginning and end of Updike’s poem, “Upon Looking into Sylvia Plath’s Letters Home.”
Here are the YouTube link and some screen grabs.
Shipe elected to JUS board
The general membership elected Matthew Shipe to fill the open seat vacated when Jack De Bellis stepped down. Shipe begins a three-year term, starting immediately.
Shipe recently won the Emerging Writers Prize given by The John Updike Review, and he has been a member of the society since 2010. A lecturer and coordinator of Advanced Writing at Washington University in St. Louis, he wrote his dissertation on John Updike’s collected short fiction, and his work has appeared in The John Updike Review, Philip Roth Studies, Critical Insights: Raymond Carver (Salem Press, 2013), Roth and Celebrity (Lexington Books, 2013), and Perspectives on Barry Hannah (University Press of Mississippi, 2007).