John updike poet biography timeline

1932—John Hoyer Updike is born on 18 March in a hospital in West Reading, Pa., the only child of Linda Grace Hoyer Updike, an aspiring writer, and Wesley Russell Updike, a high school mathematics teacher.

Because of hard times, they live with Linda’s parents at the house John Hoyer owned at 117 Philadelphia Avenue, in Shillington.

1936—Updike enters the Shillington public school system.

1943—Updike enters Shillington High School, where, as a seventh grader and with the publication of “A Handshake with the Congressman,” he contributes the first of some 285 drawings, articles, and light verse to the school newspaper and literary magazine, the Chatterbox.

1945—Updike’s family moves from the house at 117 Philadelphia Avenue—which was within a short walk of the high school, the after-school hangouts, the playground, and the county poorhouse where children often played—to his mother’s birthplace on a 93-acre farm in nearby Plowvi