Category Archives: John Updike Childhood Home

Updike Society acquires author’s typewriter

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One day after what would have been John Updike’s 91st birthday, The John Updike Society acquired the Pulitzer Prizewinning author’s typewriter from his four children. The purchase was made possible by a donation from The Robert and Adele Schiff Family Foundation, which provided the initial funding for the society to buy and restore The John Updike Childhood Home in Shillington, Pa.

The manual typewriter—an Olivetti Linea 88—was made in Great Britain in 1968-69, the year Updike moved with his family to London following the publication of Couples. It will be displayed in a case upstairs in the house at 117 Philadelphia Ave., where Updike lived from “age zero to thirteen” and where he said his “artistic eggs were hatched.” In the front bedroom of this house, at age eight, Updike used his mother’s portable Remington to type his first story, which began, “The tribe of Bum-Bums looked very solemn as they sat around their cozy cave fire.” According to biographer Adam Begley, Updike said, “I still carry intact within me my happiness when, elevated by the thickness of some books to the level of my mother’s typewriter, I began to tap at the keyboard and saw the perfect letter-forms leap up on the paper rolled around the platen.”

When the typewriter is installed at some point in the near future, it will instantly become the most important piece in this small museum, which celebrates Updike and the affection he felt for the house, the neighborhood, and Berks County. The John Updike Childhood Home is presently open Saturdays from 12-2 p.m. See the house website for more details about Updike and the house, which officially opened on October 2, 2021. The John Updike Childhood Home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was awarded a Pennsylvania Historic Marker.

John Updike Childhood Home docents are celebrated

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The John Updike Society thanked the volunteer docents that keep the John Updike Childhood Home running every weekend by treating them to a dinner at Victor Emmanuel, a local club. The idea for the dinner came from director Maria Lester, who organized the fete with help from the home’s very first docent, Dave Ruoff. Docents make small museums “work,” and the society is grateful for ours: Charlie Adams, Jill Koestel, Ken Krawchuk, Maria McDonnell, Sara Peek, Travis Peek, Paige Sechler, Linda Sepeda, Liz Siegfried, Susan Weiser, and Ruoff and Lester, who also give tours. Welcome too to three brand-new docents: Bob Fleck, Nancy Kennedy, and Shpresa Ymeraj.

Congratulations to this season’s Updike house Christmas ornament contest winners

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For the second year, The John Updike Childhood Home sponsored a Christmas ornament contest for area youths, with the winners prominently displayed on the Updike house tree in the parlor. In case you didn’t get to visit the museum when the tree was up, at least you can see this year’s winners. Congratulations to secondary school winner John Serrano, an 11th grader at Wyomissing Area School District and a welding student at Berks Career and Technology Center, for his stylized cut-out rabbit, and to elementary school winner Laasyda Sri, a 4th grader at Governor Mifflin Elementary School.

Updike scholar donates papers to John Updike Childhood Home

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Edward Vargo, who was among the first wave of Updike critics and scholars, has donated his Updike papers to The John Updike Childhood Home. The materials are mostly from his 1973 monograph, Rainstorms and Fire: Ritual in the Novels of John Updike.

Vargo has been living in Thailand, and the donated materials include Updike-related printed matter from that part of the world and accompanying notes, drafts, correspondences, and bibliographies. Later items are also included, such as notes and typescripts from “Whose Africa? Culture Wars in John Updike’s The Coup,” which was presented at the XXI Congress of the International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1999.

It took the Houghton Library a year to catalog all materials so that they could become available for scholars by appointment, and the board of The John Updike Society, which owns and operates the house-museum at 117 Philadelphia Ave. in Shillington, Pa., predicts that it could take a year or longer before scholars can gain access to the Childhood Home materials. Some of the items that could help researchers include letters, early notes and drafts, cancelled checks, Updike’s travel log, and numerous books that bear his annotations and marginalia.

Gov. Mifflin Middle School budding poets visit Updike house

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On Monday, May 2, about 120 students from Governor Mifflin Middle School toured The John Updike Childhood Home with their teachers, Ms. Werle and Miss McKay. Organizing the event and leading the tour was Director of Education Maria Lester, who also conducted a creative writing workshop.

After the tour and hearing/seeing what Shillington and Berks County meant to Updike, students went outside to write original “sense of place” poems based on their own childhood memories growing up in and around Shillington. Shown here are students at work and some posing together under Updike’s dogwood tree.

“Finally, students graduating from GM will know who John Updike was and how he put Shillington on the map,” said Dave Silcox, Updike’s longtime local contact who has been heavily involved in acquiring exhibit materials for the house museum. Thanks to the teachers and to Maria Lester for making it happen!

Local TV reports on Updike 90th birthday event

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It was a soft (and occasionally noisy) spring day in Shillington when a crowd of around 30 gathered on the side lawn of The John Updike Childhood Home, 117 Philadelphia Ave., in Shillington, Pa.

They came on Friday, March 18, to celebrate what would have been the author’s 90th birthday, to hear leading Berks County citizens read from Updike’s works, letters, interviews, and even poems the Pulitzer Prize-winning author wrote as a love-struck 10 year old.

And WFMZ 69 News was there to report.

Updike’s 90th Birthday Celebration streamed on Facebook Live

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John Updike was born 90 years ago on this date. To celebrate, John Updike Childhood Home Director of Education Maria Lester organized and hosted a reading featuring prominent Berks County residents. Watch the Facebook Live recording of the 90th Birthday Celebration at The John Updike Childhood Home, 117 Philadelphia Ave., Shillington, Pa., featuring readings from Updike’s works, interviews, letters, and even personal love poems written as a 10 year old in Shillington.

:01—Introduction and reading by Maria Lester, Director of Education at The John Updike Childhood Home (pictured)

4:54—Samantha J. Wesner, Senior Vice President Student & Campus Life, Albright College

17:18—Conrad Vanino, Shillington Councilperson and Fire Police Lt.

22:13—Charles J. Adams III, Editor, The Historical Review of Berks County

35:48—Bill McKay, Superintendent, Governor Mifflin School District

44:55—Melissa Adams, Executive Director, The Reading Public Library

49:10—Jackie Hirneisen Kendall, Updike’s classmate and first “crush”

53:55—Dave Silcox, Updike’s Berks County contact for 10 years

57:40—David W. Ruoff, former student and friend of Wesley Updike

1:01:00—Jack De Bellis, author of Updike’s Early Years, The John Updike Encyclopedia, and John Updike Remembered

Happy 90th Birthday, John Updike!

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John Updike, born this day in 1932, would have turned 90 today. From 1958-2009, Updike published roughly one book every year. He remains one of the most lauded American writers of the 20th century, being one of just four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice, one of only a handful of creative talents to receive both the National Medal of Arts (1989, from Pres. George H.W. Bush) and the National Humanities Medal (2003, from Pres. George W. Bush) in White House ceremonies, and one of just four literary writers to appear on the cover of Time magazine twice.

Pictured (right) is the Alex Katz portrait of Updike that was featured on the second cover on October 18, 1982. Time had commissioned the portrait for the cover, and later donated it to the National Portrait Gallery, where it hangs in the 20th Century Americans exhibition on the third floor.  The National Portrait Gallery also is home to the 1968 painting by Robert Vickrey (lower left) that appeared on the first Time magazine cover.

Updike was notoriously generous with his time—well known for responding to readers and spending time with groups large and small that wanted to hear him talk about writing and the state of literature in America. In that spirit, The John Updike Childhood Home will hold a special 90th Birthday Celebration reading just 90 minutes from now. Weather permitting, the reading will be held under the arbor at the side of the house; in case of inclement weather, the reading will be moved indoors and the audience will be limited to the first 25 people who come to the event at 117 Philadelphia Ave., Shilington, Pa.

The 90-minute reading of Updike’s Pennsylvania-related works, organized and hosted by Director of Education Maria Lester, features prominent Berks County residents, some of whom knew Updike and members of the Updike family.  Those unable to attend in person should check the John Updike Childhood Home Facebook page at 12 p.m. EST. The plan (technology permitting) is to stream the event on Facebook Live.

Featured readers: Samantha J. Wesner, Senior Vice President Student & Campus Life, Albright College; Conrad Vanino, Shillington Councilperson and Fire Police Lt.; Charles J. Adams III, editor of The Historical Review of Berks County; Bill McKay, Superintendent, Governor Mifflin School District; Melissa Adams, Executive Director, The Reading Public Library; Jackie Hirneisen Kendall, Updike’s classmate and first “crush”; Dave Silcox, Updike’s Berks County contact for 10 years; David W. Ruoff, former student and friend of Wesley Updike; and Jack De Bellis, author of Updike’s Early Years, John Updike Remembered, and The John Updike Encyclopedia.