The John Updike Childhood Home

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 82^nd 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.