Wesley Russell Updike (1900-1972) was an American educator, soldier, and father of author John Updike, husband of writer Linda Grace Hoyer Updike, and grandfather of David Updike. Wesley Updike served as a prominent model for many main characters his son's works, including as the central character in The Centaur (1963), which won the National Book Award for Fiction, and Updike's family history is broadly paralleled in In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996).
Wesley Russell Updike was born on February 22, 1900, in Trenton, New Jersey, to Virginia (Blackwood) Updike, a Missouri native, and Rev. Hartley Titus Updike, a Princeton educated Presbyterian minister, who suffered employment difficulties due to a throat ailment. [1] Updike had an older brother, Archibald. and sister, Mary. As a child Updike had to wear braces due to malnutrition-related developmental issues. In high school he suffered an injury while hauling newspapers and had to leave school, but a donor allowed him to return and attend St. Stephen's Episcopal Boarding School (later known as Bard College). During World War I Wesley Updike served as a private in the Student Army Training Corps from October 30, 1918, until December 13, 1918. [2] Wesley Updike enrolled at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania in 1919 on a football scholarship and was a chemical-biological major. [3]
Updike met his future wife, Linda Hoyer, on his first day of college, and married her in 1925. After graduation Updike worked various jobs including teaching at schools in Florida and Delaware, superintending a small oil and gas field in Ohio, and working as a hotel desk clerk in Reading, Pennsylvania. From 1927 to 1932 Updike worked as a lineman for AT&T. [4] Updike's only child, John, was born in 1932. After being laid off during the Great Depression in 1932, Wesley Updike became certified as a teacher after studying at Albright College, and then in 1934 he obtained a job as a math teacher in Shillington, Pennsylvania, with the help of his wife's cousin. Updike was a popular and humorous teacher and many of his antics were re-told in The Centaur and other works by his son, who had his father as a teacher for three years. [5] In 1941 Updike received a M.S. in education from the University of Pennsylvania. [6] The Updikes lived with Linda Updike's parents in Shillington until 1945 when they repurchased the family farm in nearby Plowville, which the family had sold in the 1920s, and they family moved back there over Wesley and John's objections. Wesley Updike was also active in the Lutheran church in Shillington and Plowville. Updike died April 16, 1972, in Reading, Pennsylvania, and was buried in the Robeson Lutheran Church Cemetery. Many of Wesley and Linda Updike's papers were donated to Ursinus College by their son. [7] [8]
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once, Updike published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, as well as poetry, art and literary criticism and children's books during his career.
Shillington is a borough in Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. With a population of 5,273 at the time of the 2010 census the borough is nestled amongst other suburbs outside Reading. It is perhaps best known for being the location of the homestead to Pennsylvania's first governor, Thomas Mifflin, and as the childhood home of American author John Updike. Many of Updike's stories take place in the fictional town of Olinger, a lightly-disguised version of Shillington, and in its environs.
Ursinus College is a private liberal arts college in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1869 and occupies a 170-acre campus.
Brewer, Pennsylvania is a fictional city that serves as the major setting for American writer John Updike's "Rabbit" cycle of novels. It is the center of the only fictional universe which Updike developed across multiple works, and symbolically represents his assessment of American culture from 1959 to 1999.
The Centaur is a novel by John Updike, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1963. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. Portions of the novel first appeared in Esquire and The New Yorker.
Bruce Rogers was an American typographer and type designer, acclaimed by some as among the greatest book designers of the twentieth century. Rogers was known for his "allusive" typography, rejecting modernism, seldom using asymmetrical arrangements, rarely using sans serif type faces, often favoring faces such as Bell, Caslon, his own Montaigne, a Jensonian precursor to his masterpiece of type design Centaur. His books can fetch high sums at auction.
The Speaker's House is a museum located in Trappe, in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania that preserves the home of Frederick Muhlenberg, the First and Third Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. The house was built in 1763, bought by Muhlenberg in 1781, and occupied by his family until 1791.
Governor Mifflin Senior High School is the only high school in the Governor Mifflin School District. Named for the Revolutionary War major and first governor of Pennsylvania, Thomas Mifflin, it is located in Shillington, Berks County, Pennsylvania and serves students in the five communities of Shillington, Kenhorst, Mohnton, Cumru, and Brecknock.
Plowville is an unincorporated area of Robeson Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. it is located on Pennsylvania Route 10, just east of Interstate 176. Its zip code is 19540 and the community is served by the Twin Valley School District. The most recognizable landmark is Plow Church.
John C. Hedges was an American football and baseball coach. He served as the head football coach at Franklin & Marshall College located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He held that position for the 1901 season. His coaching record at Franklin & Marshall was 7–3–1. While at the school, he also held the title of "Physical Director" of the college.
John Beadle Price was an American football and baseball coach and physician. He served as the head football coach at Slippery Rock State Normal School —now known as Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania—from 1906 to 1907, Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania from 1908 to 1913, Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut from 1914 to 1915, Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania rom 1916 to 1917, and Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania from 1920 to 1923, compiling a career college football coaching record of 69–40–15.
Muhlenberg Brothers was one of the dominant architecture/engineering firms in Reading, Pennsylvania during the first half of the 20th century.
Elizabeth Updike Cobblah is an American art teacher and ceramicist, painter, and illustrator in Massachusetts. She is the eldest child of author John Updike, and was the model for several of his characters. She is married to Tete Cobblah.
Joan Elaine Moser is an American former field hockey and softball player. She played on the U.S. women's national field hockey team from 1967 to 1979 and was in the first class of inductees into the U.S. Field Hockey Association Hall of Fame. She also played for the world champion Raybestos Brakettes softball team.
Mary Pennington (Updike) Weatherall was a visual artist and the first wife of John Updike. Many of Updike's early characters were modeled after her, particularly in his short stories about the Maple family and his novel Couples. Weatherall was the mother of artist Elizabeth Updike Cobblah and writer David Updike, and the maternal aunt of novelist Molly Fisk.
Martha Franc Ruggles Bernhard Updike is a social worker and the widow of author John Updike. She served as a model for several of his fictional characters, including in his story "A Constellation of Events", which was loosely based on the initiation of their relationship.
The John Updike Childhood Home is the childhood home of American novelist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner John Updike, who lived there with his father Wesley Russell Updike and mother Linda Grace Hoyer Updike, who was also a writer. The home is located in Shillington, Pennsylvania, a suburb of the City of Reading.
David Updike is an American writer and academic. Updike was the son of author John Updike who used David as a model in several pieces of fictional writing including Wife-wooing, Avec la Bebe-sitter, Son, and Separating.
Linda Grace Hoyer Updike (1904-1989) was an American writer from Plowville, Pennsylvania. She was the mother of author John Updike and grandmother of writer David Updike. Linda Updike also served as the model for several of her son's characters, including one of the main characters in the novel Of the Farm.