It doesn’t cost any more and it doesn’t take any more time. But once you access the Amazon Smile site and declare your support of The John Updike Society, then bookmark that page, you can shop at Amazon as you always have. The big difference? Amazon will donate a small portion of each purchase to the Society to help us continue the good work that’s being done to preserve The John Updike Childhood Home. Click here or on the banner below to get started!

After you finish shopping, you’ll get a message like this:

The John Updike Society has launched a separate website for The John Updike Childhood Home and a separate Facebook page because “the time had come,” society president James Plath said. “This helps us as we move forward with the restoration, the acquisition of exhibit material, the forging of community relationships, and the development of a market for the house as a literary and tourist destination.”

The John Updike Childhood Home webpage is at: johnupdikechildhoodhome.com.

The Facebook page for The John Updike Childhood Home is http://www.facebook.com/johnupdikechildhoodhome.

Please bookmark the former and “like” the latter. There will be, out of necessity, some overlapping, but Updike fans will see things at the Childhood Home webpage that they can’t see on the Society home page.

The John Updike Society board has approved the hiring of R.J. Doerr Co., an Easton, Pennsylvania-based contractor that specializes in historic restorations and home museums. As the Reading Eagle reported, Doerr has “a 25-year history of restoring historic properties for nonprofits, including the home of George Taylor, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.”

This past Thursday Robert Doerr did a walk-through with society president James Plath at The John Updike Childhood Home at 117 Philadelphia Ave. in Shillington, and the two agreed to a three-phase restoration. Phase 1, which is projected to be completed by the end of summer 2016, will include all the rooms that have been “deconstructed”—the dining room, living room, parlor, foyer, and all upstairs bedrooms. During this phase, the entire house needs to be rewired and the radiators need to be removed so that a more archivally-friendly forced air system of heating and cooling can be installed. Phase 2 will include the restoration of the front, side, and second-floor porches. Phase 3 involves the addition of a grape arbor that was there prior to 1945 when the Updikes moved to Plowville, and the addition of decorative exterior corbels that had been removed to make repainting cheaper/easier. The kitchen and second-floor bathroom will also be upgraded to be period, but functional, during this phase. The total for the three-phase restoration is expected to be around $300,00 to $350,000, and Plath said he is “currently and always” looking for additional corporate, foundation and individual benefactors. Those who donate $500 or more will have their names on a donor wall inside the house.

Work will begin the end of summer, after Habitat for Humanity of Berks County finishes “tear-out.” Plath estimates that Habitat volunteers saved the society an estimated $20-30,000 by scraping wallpaper and removing everything that was added to the house after 1945.

The Reading Eagle has the story.

This morning The Philadelphia Inquirer published a story on The John Updike Childhood Home—“Updike’s home to open as museum”—that was written by William Ecenbarger. If the name sounds familiar, perhaps you read about Ecenbarger’s tour of Updike country with Updike himself, with which Adam Begley chose to open the first chapter of his recently published biography. This time there was no drive, and Ecenbarger’s tour guide was curator Maria Mogford, who led him through the house that’s still in the “deconstruction” phase as it moves closer to becoming a finished product as one of America’s literary landmarks.

“When it opens, probably next year, the site will join childhood residences-turned-museums of other famed American authors,” Ecenbarger writes. “Mark Twain is forever linked to Hannibal, Mo.; William Faulkner to Oxford, Miss.; Emily Dickinson to Amherst, Mass. But in one respect, the building at 117 Philadelphia Ave. will stand out.

“More than any other American writer, Updike made his first home an ongoing setting, in intricate detail, for his 61 volumes of novels, short stories, poems, and essays. The house, where he lived with his parents and a grandparent and where he said his ‘artistic eggs were hatched,’ was also where many of his last stories are set.

“‘He said if he ever had a ghost, it would haunt this house,’ says Mogford, an English professor at nearby Albright College.”

But don’t let that stop you. Society president James Plath slept in the house on one visit and can vouch for the fact that it remains as happy a place as it was in Updike’s memory. Though the house isn’t finished yet, Mogford will still take people through it on private tours if the requested day and time mesh with her schedule. Hardhats are not required. Contact her via email at mmogford@albright.edu.

The John Updike Childhood Home is still being renovated, but the annex built by Dr. Hunter—who lived in the house after the Updikes left and needed additional space for his practice—is being rented as of July 1 to a tenant who grew up in the neighborhood, knew John Updike, and counts Updike’s father, Wesley, among his mentors.

The Borough of Shillington has approved David W. Ruoff Financial Services as a tenant in the annex of The John Updike Childhood Home, in effect establishing an onsite presence and giving the society a small rental income that will go toward monthly utilities, fees, and taxes.

The society reconfigured the annex space so that the former doctor’s waiting room will serve as the museum’s education room, with chairs lined up so groups of 24 or so can listen to speakers, or, thanks to a donation from Bruce Moyer, watch Updike-related videos on a TV monitor. The former doctor’s office has been turned into a museum gift shop, while a bathroom will be shared by the museum and the tenant, who will occupy the rooms that Dr. Hunter used for his examinations. One of those rooms even has an x-ray light that’s still operational.

Both the society board and the tenant are excited about the new arrangement.

“I consider it a privilege to occupy that space which is 1/2 block from where I was raised in Shillington, Pa.,” Ruoff said. “I knew John in his youth, but I knew his father Wesley Updike a lot better. As you know, his father was a math teacher in the Shillington High School for many years. I consider him one of my mentors during my childhood.

Ruoff said Wesley Updike “would throw snowballs at a blackboard to start showing us how to use the  decimal system: ‘Numbers to the right are smaller, numbers to the left are bigger—you get that David?’

“My mother was born 99 years ago on Philadelphia Ave. Then my grandfather moved the family up to Fourth Street, which is right next to the Jewish cemetery overlooking Shillington and Reading. The family would delight in seeing my grandfather coming from Reading on Lancaster Ave. (now 222) and they had no trouble identifying him because he had the only car in Shillington at that time. He sold spices to hotels, etc., and it was actually a company car”—a 1910 Maxwell.

Ruoff said that “John Updike gave a lot of people around here paranoia—drove everybody crazy figuring out who was who [in the fiction].”

Ruoff, who started his life insurance agency in 1967 and financial service organization in 1974, has joined The John Updike Society and looks forward to sharing stories with members.