My family! God, I love ‘em. Like all families, we have some amazing stories, triumphs, joys, sadness, and deep tragedy. In fact, when I tell people about how Ginny (my second wife) and I got back together, the long version, women get watery eyes and even men say, “You gotta write that down. It’s like Sleepless In Seattle and Forrest Gump combined!” I’m going to get around to that. 

My mom, Elizabeth Duke Lee, was brought up with six siblings by her very much Nineteenth Century mother and missionary doctor father in Wuxi, China. To say that she, her sisters, and one brother had a hard and stressful upbringing is a massive understatement. A direct 4greats grandfather, Richard Henry Lee urged an end to slavery in all The Colonies, writing what is considered the most powerful and impassioned anti-slavery tome of the 18th Century. He also wrote many of the words and phrases that his fellow-Virginian, T Jefferson used in The Declaration. One of his brother’s sons, Robert E. Lee, while utterly misguided in his implicit defense of slavery, actually may have saved the Union just as The War Between The States was ending. That is not an apology and by no means a vindication. You really have to read up on General Lee to know what I mean on that score. Not incidentally, were he alive today, HE would be the last man in the nation to be sporting the Stars and Bars on his truck or at the top of his flag pole! Also, on mom’s side, a direct ancestor is John Marshall, first Chief Justice of The Supreme Court. Yeh, I’m proud of genes but it doesn’t make me special or privileged in any way. It’s up to me and me alone to be the best or worst I can be.

My father, born in NYC in 1914, was raised in Madison, New Jersey. His early middle class  life, like that of all average American families of the time, was much more akin to life in 1814 America than the booming U.S. of 1957, when he died of a massive heart attack. The Koppers came to America in the 1840s, a German family who spent a couple of generations in the British Isles, adding in British, Scottish, and Irish genes. In North America, they added a good deal of French blood. Grandma Kopper was a Claggett. Her great-great grandfather was Thomas Claggett, the first Episcopal Bishop ordained in the new U.S. when the Revolution created a natural parting from the British Anglican Church. Bishop Claggett consecrated Christ Church, Alexandria, VA, where President Washington worshipped, R.E. Lee was confirmed, and my siblings and I were baptized. Dad, Princeton ’37, UVA Law School ’40, met mom, Sweet Briar ’40, and they married a few months before Pearl Harbor. My sister Lib was born the next August. Dad was at sea serving in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic as a Lieutenant Commander aboard destroyer escort USN Hoffman.

Ginny was born on May 8, 1945, VE Day. Her parents, Lewis and Caroline first named her “Victoria.” A few months later they changed it to “Virginia Lee” Buxton.

When he got off his ship in New London, CT, dad and mom laid the keel for me. He was supposed to only be in port briefly and then head to the Pacific to help finish things off out there; but they dropped the Big Ones, and he remained State-side. I was born April 9, 1946 in Washington, DC. April 9th is the date Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House. (Ginny and I are peace babies). Richard Henry Lee Kopper, Dick, was born in June ’47. Robert Brooke Kopper, came along in 1952. Up in Boston, April 23, 1949, Lisa Jayne Plimpton was the second of four born to Liz and Charlie Plimpton.
  
We were initially brought up in Alexandria, VA, which was still mostly woods ands streams in the late 40s and early 50s. Old Town had a dilapidated bunch of sooty brick buildings. Starbucks and Beemers were not to be seen for years to come. Dad went to work at the State Department on the Middle East desk. A friend and school mate of Adlai Stevenson, dad advised the candidate on various foreign policy issues. I met the governor three times. I was awestruck. When Ike won, dad left the State Department and went to work for ARAMCO and simultaneously advised at the UN Security Council. We moved to Larchmont, NY. He was gone a lot, traveling throughout Europe, the Mid and Far East. He loved and was consumed by his work in international law. When he was home he was a warm dad who used every home-moment to be engaged with us kids. Oh Lord, every time I write these next thoughts, I choke up…On the morning of June 4, 1957, just after my clock radio brought 10-10 WINS-New York morning jock Zeke Manners into my ears, our minister, Rev Mr. Thomas knocked on and opened my door. He asked me to get my two brothers, Dick and Robbie. When we were all gathered, sitting on my bed, Mr. Thomas told us very gently and quietly, “Your father was sick during the night.” Dick, thirteen years from starting a career as a talented newspaper reporter, wanted the facts. “Did he die?” Echoing in my soul ever since, Mr. Thomas replied, “We’re afraid so.” Mom and big sister Lib (then Betsy) were already in the living room crying. The whole home was crying. Condolences came from Stevenson, Claiborne Pell, and scores of other friends, famous and otherwise. Dad was buried at Arlington. Dick and I were sent to Aunt Sybil and Uncle Marshall Lee’s summer home outside of Camden, ME. I was eleven. Oh damn, did I hurt.

That September, mom fought for normalcy and a resumption of family life. She sent me to learn ballroom dancing in the community hall of St. John’s Church, Larchmont. A ladies’ choice was called and the absolute cutest girl in the room asked me! Me! Ginny was hearing impaired but I could never tell. Her blond curls hid her hearing aids and she backed them up with good lip-reading. I was in love, rescued by an angel, an older woman. She was twelve. Ginny had absolutely zero interest in me or any other boy-turning young man. I asked her to the movies at the Larchmont Playhouse. She didn’t want to go, but Lewis more or less told her to. He and Caroline felt badly for me. I ran to her for every dance for the rest of that Fall, but so did every other boy in the room.

On December 31, 1957, mom died. Words simply cannot tell you how Betsy, Dick, Robbie, and I felt. For me, it was something like being in a dark black pea soup fog, scary flat dark water, no wind, no sun.

One bit of relief for the four of us: we were kept together. All four of us moved in with Uncle Dr Claude Marshall Lee, Jr, Aunt Sybil, and cousins Bo, Richard, and Frances. In the loft of our Hingham, MA “Home Meadows barn, I recreated the faux TV and radio studio I had built in the basement in Larchmont. I wrote and directed my siblings and neighborhood friends in imitation Ed Sullivan Shows. I hosted as well as played guest parts, lip-synching appearances by Elvis, Ricky Nelson, and Fabian. My solo, very localized media work (a loudspeaker at the end of a wire from my Heathkit 7watt amp) involved my parroting the WMEX 1510 Color Radio jocks: Woo Woo Ginsberg (who eleven years later would be my GM at WBCN) and “Fenway,” the air-name given to every jock Max Richmond put on mornings at ‘MEX.

Hingham was an unpretentious Norman Rockwell sort of slightly upper middle class town of the late 50s, and stayed that way till the Yuppie invasion began in the mid 1980s. For the first time in my life I was sent off to private school. Derby Academy, the oldest co-educational school in the U.S., was really just what I needed. It was small, warm, and the teachers, men as well as women, had eight to fifteen students in each class. My best friend, Rick Railsback’s dad had the fanciest car of any parent, a 58 Thunderbird.  It was Rick, still a dear friend, who ran up to me at one recess yelling, “Did you hear about Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper?”

I was writing letters to Ginny, 200 miles away. She wrote back because her dad now really felt pity for me and pretty much required her to pay attention to me. I swear I smelled perfume on those letters. She tells me, “You were dreaming!” Maybe, but, I also needed closer-at-hand young-womanly attention. I matured dangerously early and would sit at my Main Street top floor bedroom window, just panting as I watched the girls stroll by. The reason Ginny had picked me back in September was, “He was the tallest boy in the room.” At twelve through fourteen I was, hands-down, the tallest boy in my class. Ha! But I totally stopped growing at fourteen. At sixty, I am the same height today as I was in1960, 5’7½” However, I am also within just a few pounds of the same weight, 140. I love to run, run road races, and road-bike as fast as I can. Except for his parting from Sheryl, I think Lance Armstrong is one of the most amazing and inspiring men of the last few decades.

Aunt Sybil and Uncle Marshall had done a very kind and responsible thing, taking us all in, utterly transforming their family’s prior existence. But, it was not a perfect fit by any means. To put it in a political and social context, Aunt Sybil and Uncle Marshall were Victorian Goldwater Republicans. It was a kind of psychic whip-lash. The good thing that came from it for me was, I had first grown up bathed in the Liberalism of Stevenson (as definitely differentiated from today’s so-called Liberals); and suddenly I was being hammered with the most conservative of old Virginia and old Massachusetts combined. Aunt Sybil was from multiple Mayflower families. “Old Virginia,” by the way, did NOT mean racist. As I said, in the Lee family we were taught to respect all men and all women. God demands that we respect others. No, Uncle Marshall’s old VA conservatism meant that our family was run a bit like VMI, coat and tie to dinner, “yes sir,” “yes mam” and so on. Frankly, we might all be better off with some of that reinstituted! Mainly, the respect part. Right, Aretha?

I “groupied” early talk show host Bob Kennedy at WBZ, Boston. He inspired me, advised, and encouraged me. I listened to his advice, applied to and got into Syracuse. I was the youngest student to get my own weekly program of 3500 watt WAER-FM when I took over Folk World, fall semester my freshman year. It was known as an "ethnic" folk show, meaning that I played the real stuff: Son House, Robert Johnson, and young but valid interpreters and singer-song writers like Joan Baez, Dave Van Rock, Tom Rush, Ritchie Havens, and Joni Mitchell. The "commercial" folk shows were playing The Kigston Trio and the New Christie Minstrals.

In the fall of 65 I had a major conversion. During the eight years I had been under Uncle Marshall's roof, I had been convinced that the Right was right and that the only good thing about Lyndon Johnson was that he was fighting the Commies in Viet Nam. The student anti-war movement was just heating up on America's campuses, but I thought they were mis-guided. I suggested that WAER and the Daily Orange newspaper editorialize IN FAVOR of the Johnson Administartion's policy and that we collect student signitures on campus, BACKING THE WAR! We collected more than 3000 signitures out of an undergarduate body of 8,000. BUT, here's what happened then. I produced a thirty minute radio documentary about the ant-war movement on campus. I'll be honest - I went into it with a slant against the protestors; then the conversion came. I interviewed an emminent moderate Republican professor in the Maxwell School at Syracuse, an Assistant Secretary of State in Washington (we delivered the scroll of signitues right to the State Department, to much media fanfare), and then the protestors.  Well, by the time I spent hours interviewing, listening to each side talk and reason, and editing the show, I realized, "Wait a second! The Administration people are talking outrageous and incredible nonsense, and these bearded protestors are making ALL the sense. I did a 1-80 and spent the next seven eight years fighting and broadcasting to end the war. I honored and still honor our American soldiers. Old men, politicians, sent young men, the world's best fighting men off to fight a war that did not need to be fought. There were absolutely other political and humanitarian ways to "win the hearts and minds," not to mention bodies of the Vietnamese. The old men's war policy was cynical and destined to fail. Outrageously, more than 30 years later, Robert McNamara, the first Viet Nam era Secretary of "Defence," came out with a book that essentially confirmed and vindicated everything we had said in the late 60s and early 70s! So, I honor the men and women who had to fight that war; and I believe that the way they have been treated, as a group, when they came home, was shameful. But the mindset that sent them was virtually criminal and counter to America's higher ideals. SO IS TODAY'S IRAQ WAR!

Right out of S.U., incredible timing placed me at WBCN, Boston as morning DJ and their first Rock program director.  But, the radio part of the story occurs elsewhere. Back to family…

In 1972 I met and adored Lisa Plimpton. We married in ’73. We had a great deal of fun, triumphs, trials, and tribulations, for twenty years. In ’74 I started my live-to-air concert broadcast business. In ’79 Samuel K.C. Kopper 3rd (“K.C”.) was born. In 1984 Charles Jacob Kopper (“Jake”) joined us. Lord, I love and am so proud of those boys, now men. I’ve had two good marriages. Only problem is, only my second wife agrees. Can’t reasonably ask for more. I only figured out my part of screwing up the first marriage seven years after it was over. We were a month shy of our 20th anniversary. “Oh God,” I cried at the heavens, “Not a second lost core family!?” We told the boys on June 4th, the next year. Our divorce was final on June 4th 1996. You know I didn’t plan that. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked at the calendar after the big events of those days!

Ginny and I hadn’t seen each other for 38 years when she stepped off the plane from Louisville, at Boston/Logan.She wasn't the least bit magnitized to me when we were eleven and twelve; but on the weekend of April 21st 1995, boy was she ready! We fell hard, fast, and oh so happily! Timing. Living together for nine years, we finally went to the chapel (my baptism church, Christ Church, Alexandria, VA) on June 5th, 2004. Yep, thank God, that weekend’s Saturday was not the 4th!

KC, who spent the mid 90s into 2001 at the top of national Mt Biking racing, is now an inspired green-oriented architect in NYC. An architech, graphic artist, and clothing designer, see his fine expansive work at www.keenekopper.com. Jake, a senior majoring in business at URI this fall, does wonderful web design and digital music production. See his stuff at www.kopertone.com. 

Ginny and I have moved all overthe East Coast in the last ten years: Hingham; Louisville; Palm Harbor, FL; back to Hingham (three houses); back to FL, Palm Coast; to Charleston, SC; and in March 2006, back to Hingham, where I sit typing to you now. This freaking town has a psychic bungee cord attached to me!