14
TOWER
|
Winter 2013
BACK TO CLASS WITH . . .
BILL BATEMAN
RANDY SCHAEFFER
BY:
FÉLIX
ALFONSO
PEÑA
PHOTOGRAPHY BY:
DAN Z.
JOHNSON
The love BILL BATEMAN and
RANDY SCHAEFFER ’72 have for
all things Coca-Cola is the real thing.
That’s stunningly obvious from the
moment one walks into their elegant
home, passing beneath a globular glass
Coca-Cola shade, circa 1915-1920, into
spacious rooms decorated with numerous
museum quality artifacts dating back to 1887, the second year
of the soft drink company’s existence.
Everywhere one looks, Coke is it.
Schaeffer, who has been teaching math at KU for 25 years,
was recently awarded the Arthur and Isabel Wiesenberger
Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching and elected to
the Alumni Association Board of Directors.
Bateman retired from Kutztown University in 2007 after
teaching math and computer science for 41 years.
“This is the only serious thing I do,” Bateman said, smiling.
Serious, indeed. Their collection, the largest in private
hands, fills three stories of a turn-of-the-century house in
Reading, Pa. Much of it is memorably beautiful.
In the parlor, dedicated to art from 1910 and earlier,
calendars featuring beautiful young women – Bateman and
Schaeffer refer to them as “our girls” – grace the walls.
“From the very beginning, they made beautiful girls
part of their advertising,” Schaeffer said. Among them is
Bateman’s favorite: a 1904 calendar with Lillian Nordica, the
first American opera star. Schaeffer’s favorite is Hilda Clark;
he and Bateman even made a pilgrimage to visit her gravesite
in New York state.
Most touching, perhaps, is the tale behind the fringed lamp-
shade, dated to 1911, hanging in the landing of the stairwell.
“The lampshade hung over a soda fountain at a drugstore
in Columbus, Ohio,” Schaeffer said. “When they tore the
place down in the 1960s, they asked the man who worked
there as a soda jerk if he wanted anything. He said, ‘I stood
under that light all my working life. I’d like to have it.’”
The man, who lived in poverty, kept the shade in his tiny
apartment. Better than money, it brought him visitors, people
who wanted to look at it or buy it. After his death, Bateman
and Schaeffer purchased it at an Ohio auction.
Not all the purchases have such memorable stories. After
all, they include countless bottles, coolers, a vending machine,
premiums for retailers and salespeople, and myriad promo-
tional items bearing the company logo: pencils, matchbooks,
buttons, playing cards, jewelry, perfume bottles in the shape
of Coke bottles, pocket mirrors, tape measures, clickers,
whistles, tie clips, cuff links, money clips, pins, a shoe brush,
a metal match safe (back in the day when they could ignite
from the friction within the box) and much more.
A pressed-wood wall clock, dated between 1894 and 1897,
mimics the look of cast iron and proclaims the “Ideal Brain
Tonic,” “Specific for Headache” and “Relieves Exhaustion.”
Among the unique pieces in the collection is an 1887
metal sign urging one to “Drink Coca-Cola for headache,”
the only such item known to exist.
Elsewhere, a ceramic urn for pouring Coke syrup, circa 1900,
shows how the drink was originally served by apothecaries:
Poured from spigots on the side into small glasses with a line
that indicated the level of syrup (one ounce). The glass was
then filled with carbonated water.
Among the oddities are watch fobs with swastika decora-
tions, from the 1920s and 1930s.
“The swastika was a symbol of good luck before the Nazis
appropriated it,” Schaeffer explained.
In contrast to the small items stored in glass-topped display
cases and numerous drawers, large cardboard cutouts designed
for window displays dominate one room. A Norman Rockwell
creation shows a boy fishing on a summer day, sipping a Coke.
Hollywood is here, too, represented by Maureen O’Sullivan,
Jackie Cooper and Wallace Beery enjoying their Cokes.
The partners’ collection and expertise was the subject of
their 1995 book: “Coca-Cola: The Collector’s Guide to
New and Vintage Coca-Cola Memorabilia.”
The soft drink giant recognizes the pair’s accomplishments.
They have attended Coca-Cola events in Atlanta, the compa-
ny’s headquarters, a number of times. Some 37 years ago they
visited the company archivist, and in 2007 they were invited
to the opening of the World of Coke museum.
“We were treated as if we were employees,” Schaeffer recalled.
The two value the camaraderie with fellow collectors,
forged over decades, and they love what Schaeffer called “the
thrill of the hunt.”
What now? There are new items to be had, such as the
share cans used in an advertisement in Singapore, two cans
sold together that can be separated, and they want to complete
their collection of calendars.
No calendars for the years 1893 to 1895 are known to
still exist, said Bateman, “but we have guesses about where
they might be.”
If anyone can unearth this lost artifact, it’s Schaeffer
and Bateman.
