Like all families, we have some amazing stories, triumphs, joys, deep tragedy, and hopes for each other and ourselves. 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. 

Mom and dad were married three months before Pearl Harbor, she a Lee of Virginia and he of Maryland and New Jersey families.  My sister Lib was born in the summer of ’42, I in April of ’46, Dick in June ’49, and Robert in November ’52. Dad and mom died in the same year, 1957. Between their deaths June 4th  and December 31st of that year, I met Ginny Buxton at a church dance in Larchmont, NY, where my two brothers, sister, mom and dad and I  lived after moving from Alexandria, Virginia, my home town. After mom died we were sent to be brought up by my aunt and uncle in Hingham, MA. The 50s were not bright white picket fences for me, nor for many other Boomers. It really wasn’t just the “I Like Ike” decade. Underneath, it was broiling. My first media memories were the Rosenberg trials, the McCarthy hearings, and Korea.  We were hiding under desks. The “colored” people were in the back of the bus. I do not mean to say that the whole decade was horrible; just that it was not simply the Ozzie & Harriett Davy Crokett lunchbox decade it's usually made out to have been. The 60s? Well, what people call "the 60’s" really didn’t start till President Kennedy was murdered and The Beatles landed a month later. It didn’t really get crankin’ till Janis, Jimi, and Kent State. My Syracuse University WAER folk show, begun in the fall of ’64, was a most wonderful start for me. Right out of SU, more incredibly good timing and luck, I became the first Rock PD and the morning jock of WBCN/Boston.

In 1972 I met and adored Lisa Plimpton. We married in ’73. 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. Whatever. Lisa’s happy with Dan, and Ginny and I are sure as hell happy. Here’s something else wacky…Lisa’s second husband, Dan’s father was an acquaintance of my dad’s at The State Department in the late 40s and early 50s!

In ’74 I started my live-to-air concert broadcast business, as Crab Louie Studios. I had converted a well-used Boston school bus into half hippie motor home, half radio/multi-channel music production mobile unit. We were producing all the live-to-air concert broadcasts for WBCN, WCOZ (BCN’s Boston competition), ‘BLM/Portland, ‘BRU/Providence, ‘HCN/Hartford, ‘PLR/New Haven, and other stations all over the Northeast. In ’78, I hooked up with Jim Slattery as a business partner, changed the company name to Starfleet Studios, acquired a bigger bus and hugely upgraded our production facilities, including 24-track recording. At about this time, multi-city FM stereo hookups (networks) became technically possible and soon, instead of mixing the music from a venue and sending out to just the one local station, we were sending to five, ten, twenty-five, and ultimately a hundred stations simultaneously. I quit full-time work at WBCN in late 1977, to take Starfleet full-time. From the mid 1970s through the early 90s, my crews and I produced live-to-air (that’s very different than “live-on-tape”) nearly every major act of those years. We did every kind of music from Rock to R&B, Reggae (Bob Marley and The Wailers was my first ‘BCN broadcast!), Jazz, Country, and yes, a season of the Boston Pops! We had the great pleasure and honor of working with and knowing so many great artists: Springsteen, Taylor, Hynde, Heads, Daniels, Elton, Mellencamp, The Police, U2, and so many more. The Boss was all he was promoted to be – a real nice, unpretentious, good guy. And, BTW, Ozzy was THE most professional, gentlemanly, and easy to work with artist of them all! We produced the national broadcast of the Central Park No-Nukes all day concert in 1982, the worldwide radio feed of Live Aid from Philly in ’85 (feeding the signal to every square inch of the planet), and The Concert of Hope for Amnesty International (with Westwood One) in ’86. 

In ’79 Samuel K.C. Kopper 3rd (“K.C”.) was born. In 1984 Charles Jacob Kopper (“Jake”) joined us. All through the 80s and early 90s, we had great family years. I was working hard and loving it. We were flying around in our own plane to Disney World, Sesame Place, Quebec City, and Lisa’s mom’s home on the North Fork of Long Island. We were teaching and learning from each other, playing town hockey and baseball, boating, and camping. I treasure those years and, Lord, I love and am so proud of the boys, now men.

On a July morning in ’93, Lisa looked a bit drawn. Sam: “What’s wrong?” Lisa, a little bit teary eyed, but tinged with a blushing of anger: “I don’t love you. And, when I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever really loved you.” We were a month shy of our 20th anniversary. Pretty much in a fetal position for three weeks I cried, “Oh God, 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. June 4th, three times!

Ginny and I hadn’t seen each other for 38 years when she stepped off the plane from Louisville, at Boston/Logan. She hadn’t given a rat’s rear about me back when I was eleven and she twelve (I’m into older women); but on the weekend of April 21st 1995, boy was she ready! We fell hard and oh so happily! Timing, gotta love it. 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, www.keenekopper.com. Jake, a senior majoring in business at URI, does wonderful web design, and digital music production. See his stuff at www.kopertone.com.  Ginny and I have moved all over in the last ten years: Hingham; Louisville; Palm Harbor, FL; back to Hingham (three houses); back to FL, Palm Coast; to Charleston, SC; and this past March, back to Hingham, where I sit typing to you now. This freaking town has a psychic bungee cord attached to me! I’m a seeker.

A favorite quote of mine, heard in NPR’s coverage of the passing of The Reverend William Sloan Coffin who said, and I’m paraphrasing, “There is not a lot of good reason for optimism these days, but I do still have heavens of HOPE.”

The longer version of this story and “Sam’s Message include my politics, my hopes for my chosen medium, our Nation, a bit of my spiritualism, and more. Warning – I can be wordy; but it may be of some interest to a few people.