You may have noticed the “Well-known residents have included” section on many of our pages. A seemingly simple category, it matches celebs with their hometowns and other places of residence. But what happens when a celebrity is linked not to her hometown, but to her hometown’s rival community? We were alerted to this outrage by email yesterday.

B. wrote:

“I was born and raised in Westerly. I now live in Stonington. I could be wrong, but I do not think Ruth Buzzi ever lived in Westerly. If so, not for long. She was born in Stonington, CT and attended Stonington High School. This much I know for sure….Hopefully this will be of further assistance to you. I am pretty certain that people who have lived in Westerly and Stonington all their lives will react that same way as I did when I saw her listed with Westerly. She’s a Stonington girl for sure.”

Wanting to set the record straight on the comedian made famous from her appearances on the 1960s TV hit, “Laugh-In,” I did some extensive Googling. I soon discovered that Westerly, RI, and Stonington, CT, are bordering towns on the Rhode Island-Connecticut state line. B. described the rivalry: “If you are from one you are from one, if you catch my drift.”

Still, I was only able to find online evidence connecting Buzzi to Westerly; some sources noted that she had claimed her hometown was Wequetequock, CT, without any mention of Stonington.

The only way to clear it up, as B. pointed out in a later email exchange, was to call her family’s business, Buzzi Memorials, in Stonington. As it turns out, the facts are more complicated than I had imagined. Both B. and I made calls to Buzzi Memorials and heard the same family history from a Buzzi family member.

B. reported back:

“I’ve got some good information for you. Harold Buzzi, Ruth’s older brother, called me back. He runs Buzzi Memorials on Route 1 in Stonington. He told me that Ruth was born in 1936 at Dr. Anderson’s ‘hospital’ in Watch Hill, a village in Westerly. Watch Hill was and is a vacation hot spot in New England - great beaches. I put the word hospital in quotes because it wasn’t a modern hospital like we think of today. Westerly Hospital was the first modern hospital in the area.

“The Buzzi family was living on Dayton Street in Westerly at the time of her birth. They moved to Stonington in April of 1942 and Ruth, Harold and their other brother Edward grew up there. Ruth did indeed go to Stonington High School, graduating about 1953 or 1954. She would have been 5 or 6 when she and her family moved to Stonington, so she really grew up there, not in Westerly.

“Again, I am certain that if you polled people in Westerly and Stonington and asked them if they associated Buzzi with Westerly or Stonington, they would say Stonington.”

I also verified these facts by calling Buzzi Memorials. To sum it up, Ruth Buzzi was born in the Westerly, RI, hospital and lived in Westerly until she was about six, when her family moved to Stonington in 1942. However, because there was no post office in Stonington, the Buzzi family retained a mailing address in nearby Westerly. As for Wequetequock, CT? I was told Wequetequock is a village located in the Stonington area.

As ePodunk listings go, technically, Buzzi was a resident of BOTH places. You can see her listing as a well-known resident on both ePodunk pages: Westerly, RI and Stonington, CT.

Have we missed a well-known resident in your town? Submit it to us by sending an email to info@epodunk.com

-Emily

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