Editor’s note: This story was originally published Jan. 29, 2009.
It was a humble beginning for a literary lion, serving as copy boy in the early 1950s at the Reading Eagle.
“John Updike could see things others didn’t – and at the time we had a staff of characters,” said retired associate editor John A. Kunkleman, 85, Fleetwood, a general assignment reporter when Updike spent several summer internships at the newspaper.
This week’s death of Updike, 76, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Shillington native, prompted Kunkleman to reminisce about Updike’s early years at the Eagle.
“I was usually out of the office (on his beats), so I guess I didn’t make too much of an impression on him, because I don’t believe I was mentioned in his famous critique,” Kunkleman said, referring to a satirical piece Updike wrote and boldly submitted to top editors.
The report poked fun at his colleagues and superiors.
The infamous satire, often referred to in private conversations by many journalistic old-timers, somehow mysteriously disappeared over the years.
Some feel an impetus for the critique may have been related to Updike’s feelings of being underused while toiling at the paper, mainly running copy between newsroom, composing room and courthouse; serving editors coffee and breakfast; and sometimes assigned mind-numbing tasks of compiling theater and radio timetables.
“I looked at John as someone with a great sense of comedy,” said Kunkleman, a one-time 15-a-day cigar smoker who has cut back to one cigar a year — to celebrate his birthday.
“At the time, I felt he would probably wind up writing or performing in that comic vein,” he said. “I started reading several of his novels on many occasions, but I can honestly say I never finished one.”
Kunkleman recalled that Updike, in his newspaper satire, compared one reporter to the bumbling sheriff, Phil Finn, featured in a popular comic strip Mickey Finn.
Updike lampooned another local journalist for the man’s peculiar walk.
“As I recall, he said the guy always looked like he had just gotten off of a horse,” Kunkleman said.
“I remember our city editor, Tom Boland, who could be a pretty stern guy, but was fair, kept the Updike piece for some time,” Kunkleman said. “Someone apparently borrowed it and it was never seen again.”
With one reporter investigated for keeping too many cats and another who wrote stories in longhand, refusing to use a typewriter, there apparently was no shortage of quirky characters to inspire a budding literary master.
Even the Eagle’s managing editor was probably fodder for Updike.
“I remember one guy coming in with some military news asking me if the paper could run it and I told him that it would require approval from Walter Dillon (the managing editor),” Kunkleman said. “He took one look at Dillon’s expression and said, ‘He doesn’t look like the type of guy who would approve anything.’ ”
Donald VanLiew, 76, of Shillington, a retired Reading Eagle copy editor and an Updike high school classmate, said he replaced Updike as the editorial copy boy in 1953.
“I believe John was there (at the newspaper) for three summers during his college years,” VanLiew said. Updike attended Harvard University.
Neither VanLiew nor Kunkleman recalled any features or literary works that Updike actually wrote for the newspaper.
“I was a copy boy, too, in the beginning and I took information over the phone,” Kunkleman said.
VanLiew would come into the office on weekends and write sports stories.
“Johnny had his physical problems – a stammer and psoriasis, but he always had a great sense of humor,” VanLiew said. “I think he really developed his screwiness as a defense mechanism so that people would be laughing at what he did rather than laughing at him.”
