Novels and wine book clubs are as popular as ever, but it’s tough to beat reading a book by an author and then discussing it in the author’s house.
In March this group met at The John Updike Childhood Home in Shillington, Pa., to tour the house with director Maria Lester and then discuss John Updike’s Witches of Eastwick in the education room. If your bookclub is interested, contact Maria at johnupdikeeducation@gmail.com.
With heavy hearts we report that the senior docent of The John Updike Childhood Home, David W. Ruoff, died Jan. 1 at age 83 of congestive heart failure while in hospice care in Ephrata. Dave became a member of The John Updike Society in 2012 after he began renting the single-story annex to The John Updike Childhood Home, back when it was still a deconstruction zone.
From the beginning, though, Dave was more than a renter. He became a great friend to society president James Plath, who traveled from Illinois to Shillington to work on the house several times each year over the course of the decade it took to restore the house to be historically accurate and to create a museum Berks County could be proud of. Dave loved Updike and was willing to help any way he could. He began by receiving items shipped to the society and by giving impromptu tours to people who came to the house, telling them how he grew up on Philadelphia Ave. just two blocks from the Updike house at 117.
Dave loved regaling visitors with stories about Updike’s father, Wesley, whom he had for a teacher, and he loved going the extra mile and giving people who had traveled to Shillington from abroad or great distances samples of Berks County ring bologna and Tom Sturgis pretzels—the latter, Updike’s favorite. Sometimes, if they asked for directions to Plowville, Dave would even drive them . . . after first showing them the Updike sites in Shillington that they might have otherwise missed. And when an alarm would go off in the middle of the night, Dave, one of three people with a key, always volunteered to get his coat and gun and drive over to make sure everything was all right.
Although it takes a village to create a museum that’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has a Pennsylvania Historic Marker—a museum that The Wall Street Journal last year called “a worthy site of literary pilgrimage”—Dave was part of a core group most responsible for the museum’s creation and operation. In addition, numerous people over the years have made donations to the society based on their interaction with Dave, whose community pride and passion for Updike was contagious.
The society loved him back. On October 2, 2021, the board honored him as the sixth recipient of The John Updike Society Distinguished Service Award, praising his “extraordinary docent work and other services to The John Updike Childhood Home.” Dave was funny, generous, thoughtful, and a little bit larger than life. He’ll be greatly missed.
The obituary notes that Dave graduated from Gov. Mifflin High School in 1959 as a double athlete (football and wrestling), served in the Army with the 82nd Airbourne, and was a “proud member of the Special Forces as a Green Beret.” Dave was in the insurance business for 55 years and loved hunting, biking, and spending time with his family. Here is the full obituary, which details where donations can be made.
Our deepest sympathies go to his wife, Maria, daughter Tara, son Jim, grandchildren Zack, Cole and Rayne, great-grandchildren Tanner and Beckett, and all members of the Ruoff extended family.
There’s no question: the docents at The John Updike Childhood Home are a knowledgeable and talented bunch. Have a look at their bios on the johnupdikechildhoodhome.com site and you’ll see why tour groups love them so much.
A number of docents have published books, but the most recent is Unique Stories in Berks County, by Susan Atkins Weiser. The softcover 8×11 volume features 25 stories of Berks County, including Little Miss Coney Island, Hail Miss Reading of 1924, John Wilkes Booth in Reading, The Pomeroy Country Club, The Creation and Unveiling of the Abraham Lincoln Hotel, Sulkie’s Shine at Shillington Speedway, The Orpheum Theater, Blue Ribbon Pretzels, The Fedden Brothers in Shillington, Edna Phillips (the first lady of the orchestra), Benjamin H. Zehr (the movie theatre mogul). Cover price is $25.
Members of The John Updike Society who attended the 3rd Biennial Conference in Reading might be interested to read about the Abraham Lincoln, our conference hotel, and Updike fans will likely be interested to read the piece on The Berks County Almshouse, which inspired Updike’s first novel, The Poorhouse Fair. On display inside The John Updike Childhood Home are a number of things related to that novel, including a coffee table crafted from two shutters that a former Updike classmate rescued when the building was demolished and later donated it to the society.
Susan will docent next on June 15 from 12-2 p.m. and will undoubtedly be happy to talk about the book and answer any questions.
During May and June two very different groups—members of the local chapter of DAR, and Mr. Burkart’s Muhlenberg School District AP Literature class—toured The John Updike Childhood Home and came away with the same impression: it was a pretty unique place, full of stories and local history.
Artist and John Updike Childhood Home docent Barbara Post drew an appreciative audience for her talk on “The Artistry of John Updike: Throughout His Prolific Writing.” The June 1, 2024 event was the most recent in the JUCH Speaker Series that offers a lecture and admission to the museum for $10.
Nothing says “welcome” like a brand new parking lot that takes away any doubts about whether it’s okay to park on the lower property near Brobst. The lot was along time coming, but it was a condition of being zoned for a museum in a residential area. We now have a designated handicapped space right next to the house. Thanks to property manager John Trimble, who coordinated this upgrade. The John Updike Childhood Home museum is located at 117 Philadelphia Ave. in Shillington, Pa.
If you’re planning on visiting The John Updike Childhood Home this summer, be aware that the museum just announced summer hours, restricted because of volunteer availability. The museum, which formally opened in October 2021, has been favorably reviewed and recommended by The Wall Street Journal. It was where Updike lived from “age zero to thirteen” (1932-45) and where he famously said his “artistic eggs were hatched.” Exhibits in all rooms tell the story of Updike and the influence of Berks County on his writing.
Questions about the house at 117 Philadelphia Ave. in Shillington, Pa. should be directed to John Updike Childhood Home director Maria Lester, johnupdikeeducation@gmail.com. The museum is owned and operated by the 501c3 nonprofit John Updike Society.
Before you head to Flanagan’s, a favorite stop for the adult John Updike, spend some time at The John Updike Childhood Home for a special St. Patrick’s Day event featuring Charles J. Adams III, editor of The Historical Review of Berks County and a member of The John Updike Childhood Home Advisory Board.
Philadelphia-based cultural reporter and critic Julia Klein recently spent several hours touring The John Updike Childhood Home and wrote a review for The Wall Street Journal that was published on Sept. 4, 2023.
“For such a clear-eyed chronicler of America’s angst-ridden middle class, John Updike was surprisingly sentimental about his Pennsylvania roots. Here, one of his narrators declared, ‘the basic treasure of his life was buried,'” Klein wrote.
“In the short story ‘The Brown Chest,’ Updike’s narrator recalls ‘the house that he inhabited as if he would never live in any other’ and the ‘strange, and ancient, and almost frightening’ wooden chest that served as a repository of family memories.
“Both its hold on the author and the allure of its intimate artifacts, from that chest to Updike’s earliest drawings, make the John Updike Childhood Home a worthy site of literary pilgrimage.
“The house museum, opened in October 2021, recently added seven vitrines, with artifacts including the Remington rifle of Updike’s short story ‘Pigeon Feathers’ and the Olivetti manual typewriter he used for four decades. After a summer hiatus, it reopens Saturdays from 12-2 p.m. starting Sept. 9.”
Klein observed that the museum’s emphasis is on how Shillington “formed him as a writer,” but that the museum “deals less fully with other aspects of his life, failing even to mention his second wife, Martha Bernhard.” She noted too that some of the object labels were a bit small to read, but that was a “defect corrected in the newer vitrines.”
Klein said the museum’s thematic approach “pays off particularly well in his mother’s writing room,” where images and artifacts suggest the complicated mother-son relationship with each other and their shared goal of becoming a writer. “The relationship seems to have been at once close and embattled, with the son vaulting to the literary success his mother craved.”
Read “The John Updike Childhood Home Review: Rabbit’s Roots” (subscription required).
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The John Updike Childhood Home 