JOSEPH J. COPPO: Every Kid's
Coach
"You
don't know Joe Coppo, and you do," Mike Lupica wrote in
The Daily News two Sundays after the attacks. "Every
town, if it is lucky, has somebody like him, the guy who
doesn't just want to coach his own kids but all the
kids."
Joseph J. Coppo, 47, a burly municipal bond trader at
Cantor Fitzgerald, coached all four of his children, and
hundreds of other children in New Canaan, Conn.
"He was very demanding, but he was someone you always
wanted to work hard for," said his daughter, Kathleen,
22, who played center field for him on a softball team.
This summer, Mr. Coppo coached his youngest son's
All-Star baseball team. Theplayers, 13 years old,
attended his funeral in their uniforms.
Kathleen Coppo, who described her father as "my best
friend, the first person I turned to for anything,"
teaches a class on social justice at a small Catholic
girls school. Recently one of her students asked her
whether Sept. 11 had caused her to abandon her pacifist
beliefs. No, she replied -- an answer, she said, that
might have pleased her father, who considered applying
for conscientious-objector status when he was drafted
just as the Vietnam War was ending. "He was not into
war," she said.
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