After seeing a photo of the soon-to-be-gone Buzzy beer cooler, a sharp eyed Buzzyblog follower asked me about the R magnet on the side of the cooler and wondered if it stood for Ridgell. I told her that it was actually the Rutgers University Scarlet Knights’ logo.
The logo was given to me by former tenant Mike Kolenick who graduated from Rutgers. Mike rented the apartment to the right of the front door as you walk into Buzzy’s Country Store. It was a small one room apartment but suited Mike just fine. He resided there several years before getting married and moving to the Lexington Park area. Upon his moving out, he bequeathed the Rutgers R to me for reasons I still don’t know why. I stuck it on the beer cooler where it has remained ever since.
In looking for info on Rutgers University, I saw reference to their Zimmerli Art Museum and its housing of the Dodge Collection of Russian art given to them in 1991. (See? Some places get donations of priceless art and Buzzy’s gets a Scarlet R magnet.)
Regarding the Dodge art collection, I recall my friends Paula and Bill Mitchell also discussing this. They noted that Professor Dodge, who taught at St. Mary’s College, at one time wanted to bequeath his collection to St. Mary’s. For various reasons that fell through and Rutgers became the eventual host site for the collection.
Check out this description from Wiki along with this 1996 article by Jon Johnston (click here.)
In 2017 Ms. Dodge donated another 17,000 items to the museum (click here.)
The following video gives you some idea of what the Dodge collection contains.