Emil R. Kopp, R.I.P.

My dad passed away on Monday May 26, six years to the day that my mom died. He had been living in a nursing home and was under hospice care due to an infection he’d received from having an abscessed tooth that had gone untreated until it was too late. The infection would eventually spread throughout his body and would be his demise.

He was a World War II veteran and had spent most of his time in the service stationed in Greenland, “an awful place” as he put it, where he served as Chief Clerk at the Quatermaster Depot because of his typing, accounting and office skills learned while attending business school in St. Louis. He also had a very keen eye and was an Expert Marksman, able to hit a bullseye with multiple rounds fired from 500 yards away. While he was stationed in Greenland he took to boxing. He really enjoyed this and quickly earned a reputation of a tough fighter. He became so skilled with his fists that soon many GIs coming through his port on their way to Europe wanted to fight him. They’d see him in the mess hall and make comments like, “He doesn’t look so tough.” This usually meant a challenge was being issued and he would have to fight. He never lost a bout.

We will never forget the stories he would share with us about his days in the Army during World War II, or the stories of growing up in and around Manchester, Missouri, back when it was just a small farming town on a dirt road miles from “the big city” of St. Louis. My dad came from a large family that was always there with him, living in and around the Manchester area, but he lost his father (Emil Julius) to pneumonia during the Great Depression, when he was only 10 years old.

His passions for his family, taking us on extended vacations in the family car, history, music (loving everything from country to reggae), reading, camping, baseball, hunting, fishing, nature, planting trees, wildlife and the environment will never be forgotten. He would plant so many trees and shrubs in our yard that it became difficult to play in, and later even more difficult to mow. He read the Bible to me (cover to cover) when I was probably too young to understand what most of it meant, and he would take me for long walks around our Bridgeton neighborhood almost every evening, rain or shine. We would stop and rest on a bench and talk about the Moon and stars in the night sky. These things I will never forget.

He was a recycler (of EVERYTHING… glass, aluminum, tin, cardboard, paper… right down to separating the cellophane envelope windows from the paper and removing staples from pamphlets and magazines) and a backyard composter (not allowing my mother to put any sorts of biodegradable waste in the garbage, but instead using it to fill drainage ruts in our backyard) decades before it was politically correct to do so. And he was extremely meticulous in everything he did, whether it be planting trees at one of our many houses when I was growing up, repairing something, changing a tire or building a birdhouse. If it wasn’t absolutely perfect, he’d start all over.

He was also bullheaded, short-tempered and fiercely independent. He was extremely stubborn, defiantly opinionated and stood up for what he believed in and never backed down to anyone, be them friend or foe. But at the very same time he could be extremely caring, warm, loving and sensitive. I see many of these same character traits in myself. Life is funny like that.

We’ll miss you, Dad.