Today, Berks-Mont News featured an article on the restoration of The John Updike Childhood Home, written by Emily Thiel, editor of The Southern Berks News and Community Engagement Editor for Berks-Mont Newspapers:

“Happy Birthday John Updike:  John Updike Society and Berks Habitat for Humanity work to transform Updike childhood Shillington home as museum”

The John Updike Society has received a $20,000 donation from the PECO Foundation, a charitable trust based in New York City, “to help support the John Updike Society’s project to preserve the Updike family house.”

H. Roemer McPhee, who is on the board, is a huge Updike fan—not just familiar with all the novels and short stories, but able to quote from them. This past summer he toured the house and Shillington-Plowville sites with his mother, Updike Society president James Plath, and John Updike Childhood Home curator Maria Mogford. And he saw firsthand the work that needed to be done.

Last year the PECO Foundation contributed $3000 but upped their donation this year to help with much-needed house repairs and restoration, which are expected to cost some $300,000.

The contribution looms even larger than that, because it’s the first major donation other than ones received from The Robert and Adele Schiff Family Foundation, whose generosity enabled the society to buy the house and begin the restoration. “It paves the way for other major donors to climb onboard and together create a literary landmark that can be appreciated for many generations to come,” Mogford said.

Mogford said that the exterior of the house has been painted this fall, and that work inside will begin again in the spring and continue throughout summer of 2014, in anticipation of being at least “presentable” for the Third Biennial John Updike Society Conference to be held the first week in October of 2014. That conference, like the first, will be hosted by Alvernia University.

On Monday, June 10, Shillington realtor Conrad Vanino received The John Updike Society’s second Distinguished Service Award—an 8×10” plaque thanking him “for his invaluable help acquiring and converting The John Updike Childhood Home into a museum.”

Vanino (pictured below with society co-founder Dave Silcox and curator Maria Mogford) helped the society go through proper channels and worked pro bono. He continues to serve the society behind the scenes, maintaining a lock box on the property so work crews can enter and checking on the house several times per day. Vanino is also in the process of looking for a suitable tenant for the annex added by Dr. Hunter, who lived in the house after the Updikes. The society has divided the annex so that three rooms of the building used for patient exams can be rented as office space to help cover the expenses of maintaining the house. The doctor’s office will be used as a gift shop, and the waiting room will be the educational room, for watching videos or for class presentations.

Vanino is a lifelong resident of the Shillington area who has served on Borough Council for over 30 years and is also on the board of the Shillington Lions Club and the board of Crime Alert Berks. He is a member of the Shillington Business Association and a graduate of Governor Mifflin High School. Like many Shillington youngsters, he learned to swim in the pond that provided the water supply for the poorhouse Updike wrote about, just blocks away from the house at 117 Philadelphia Avenue.

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If you haven’t renewed your membership in The John Updike Society by paying your 2013 dues—and only a fifth of current members have done so—please send a check made payable to The John Updike Society to James Plath, 1504 Paddington Dr., Bloomington, IL 61704. Dues are $25/year, $20 for grad students and retirees.

At a time when money is needed to move forward with the renovation of The John Updike Childhood Home at 117 Philadelphia Ave. in Shillington, member donations are now approaching $1000. Thanks to Bruce Moyer, Kathleen Olson, Gerald Connors, Livia Lloyd-Hawkins, Alan and Maureen Phipps, Steve Malcolm, Don Greiner, Jay Althouse, Kevin Schehr, Janice Fodor, Ward Briggs, Richard L. Chafey, and Mark Roosevelt for their generosity and for helping us get a nice start on raising the money ($10,000) needed to scrape, repair, and paint the outside of the brick building.

The John Updike Society is a 501 c 3 organization, and everyone who makes a donation will receive a letter of thanks and acknowledgment that can be used for tax purposes.

What’s new at the house? The single-story annex has just been remodeled, so now the Society can find a tenant to lease the three rooms formerly used as patient examination rooms by Dr. Hunter, who bought the house from the Updikes. Pictured is the doctor’s former office just off the front entrance to the original part of the house, which will be used as a gift shop for The John Updike Childhood Home. A still-operational x-ray viewing screen was left on the wall of one exam room as a reminder of the contributions that the Hunter family made to the house where Updike said his “artistic eggs were hatched.”