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COPPO-Joseph J. Jr. of New Canaan, Ct formally of Baldwin, NY suddenly and tragicaly on September 11, 2001 in the World Trade Center, Vice President, Municipal Bonds, with Cantor Ftizgerald. Beloved husband of Patricia (nee Brennan). Adoring father of Kathleen, Joseph, Matthew and John. Devoted son of Jean and the late Joseph J. Coppo of Baldwin and dear son-in-law of Dr. and Mrs. Paul Brennan. Loving brother of Mary and Hal Anderson of West Islip. Also survived by many caring brothers and sister-in-law, nieces and nephews. A loved and cherished friend of many. Joe graduated from Maria Regina HS and Manhattan College where he captained the baseball team. Currently was very involved in youth sports and founded the New Canaan Baseball Association. A Memorial Mass of Resurrection, Saturday, September 22nd at noon at St. Aloysius RC Church, New Canaan, Ct. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Brother James Collins Fund, c/o Manhattan
College, NY.
Joseph J. Coppo Jr
Joseph J. Coppo Jr., 47, of New Canaan, Conn., and West Lake Road, Skaneateles, died Sept. 11. He was on the 104th floor of the World Trade Center North Tower in New York City when an airplane crashed into the building. Born in New York City, he was a graduate of Maria Regina High School in Uniondale and 1975 graduate of Manhattan College, where he was the pitcher and captain of the baseball team. He was vice president at Cantor Fitzgerald for the past year. He was the founder of Municipal Bond Partners, a Wall Street bond firm. He had worked at Smith Barney in Los Angeles. His father, Joseph, died previously. Survivors: His wife of 24 years, the former Patricia A. Brennan; a daughter, Kathleen N. Coppo of New Canaan; three sons, Joseph III, Matthew and John K., all of New Canaan; his mother, Jean Coppo of Baldwin; a sister, Mary Anderson of West Islip. Services: Noon Saturday in St. Aloysius Church, New Canaan.
Sunday, September 23, 2001
It was our town yesterday, in the Catholic church across from a Bob's Store and a CVS, with police directing traffic on Cherry Street and cars parked all the way to the entrance to the ballfields at Mead Park, where Joe Coppo used to coach. Those ballfields were so often the finish line to a day that began with the 6:45 train to the city and then the trip downtown to his office at Cantor Fitzgerald, on the 104th floor of 1 World Trade Center, the tower that got hit first on the morning of Sept. 11.
The funeral for Joe Coppo was yesterday at noon sharp, people lined up six deep against the walls, the rest spilling out the lobby and onto the sidewalk facing Cherry Street, all these people who called Joe Coppo a friend or knew him enough to say hello or coached against him, all those who just knew his face, smiling usually, from across a ballfield at Mead Park on a night in the spring.
You don't know Joe Coppo, and you do. 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. It was him yesterday. Our town, New Canaan, Conn. It could have been your town, or any borough of the city. Sometimes it seems as if they found a way to hit us all.
It was Joe Coppo's wife, Pat, and their four children, who sat in a church yesterday and listened to all the words about faith and strength and God's plan, who sang the songs and listened to the eulogies for a parent lost because he showed up for work at one of those offices where you had to think on clear days you could see your reflection in the sky.
"Joe was the town," Dick McRedmond was saying in the morning before church. "He was one of those guys."
McRedmond's son, Ryan, and Joe Coppo's youngest son, Matt, were best friends. So the two fathers decided to coach together. It happens that way a lot. When the boys were 11 they played together in the league called the Majors in our town. The team was called the Devil Rays. It was the same league the next year, when they were 12. That year they got to be the Yankees.
"The name didn't matter," McRedmond said. "Everybody wanted to be on Joe Coppo's team."
Later he would give one of the eulogies in the packed church. Before the service began, before they all went inside to say goodbye to a piece of the town gone forever, another father, one whose son had played for one of Coppo's teams, said, "My kid couldn't play a lick. And every day he ever played for Joe he got treated like a champion."
And one of Coppo's best friends, a tough little guy named Jim Bulakowski, told a story about the Senior Babe Ruth team Coppo had coached six years ago, not because he had a son on it, just because the team didn't have anybody to coach it. Joe Coppo raised a hand at a meeting and said he'd take it.
"The first game he coached, one of the fathers comes up to him afterward and starts complaining that his son didn't play enough," Bulakowski said. "The usual stuff. Then he starts giving Joe a lecture about all the strategy things he'd screwed up in the game. Joe listens patiently, then he smiles at this guy. You could never wipe the smile off Joe's face. Finally he says to this guy, 'Do you know what the great Leo Durocher said once?' The guys says, no, he doesn't. Still smiling, Joe says, 'Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand.'"
Jim Bulakowski and Dick McRedmond and everyone else stood in the church yesterday and tried to remember a ballfield Coppo wasn't on, a weekend in the winter when you did not see him watching a kids basketball game at the Y or at the high school or at one of the middle schools. He was a founding member of the town's baseball board, former president of the basketball board. One of those guys.
At the Presentation of the Gifts during the funeral Mass, Bulakowski and Piel Pennington, an old UMass quarterback, brought up wine and cheese and then the kids from the last baseball team Coppo ever coached, a group of 13-year-old All-Stars who played in a big travel league in the next town over, came to the back of the church in their pressed white uniforms. One carried the team's championship trophy to the front of the church, another carried a bat, another carried a glove that had belonged to Coach Coppo. A woman sang "Shine, Jesus, Shine" in a clear, strong voice. And all over the church all these other faces I knew from our town's ballfields, and gyms, continued to cry for Joe Coppo.
Jerry Costello, a basketball ref, stood with his son in the back of the church and said, "How many more days like this are there going to be?"
There will be a month of them, maybe more. Yesterday was for Joe Coppo, 47, who was ours, who took the 6:45 on one Tuesday morning and never came home. Yesterday was the church on Cherry Street, maybe 50 miles from 1 World Trade Center and 11 days from Sept. 11.
During the communion, everybody sang "Amazing Grace," hymn No. 583 in the red books we all had been handed. The exit hymn was "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory," No. 686. Before that came the eulogies, the first by Coppo's brother-in-law, John.
"How did evil take Joe Coppo and 6,000 others?" he began in a fragile voice.
There were no answers yesterday, because there are no answers. Just days like these, moving around the city, moving to the suburbs, to Connecticut and Long Island and New Jersey. All around the church, you could see those white jerseys from Joe Coppo's last team, as though a spotlight kept finding them. Our town yesterday. Our turn. We said goodbye to Joe Coppo. You know the type. All he did was treat all of them like champions.
Mike Lupica--New York Daily News
Joseph John Coppo, 47, of New Canaan, Conn.: Vice-president of municipal bonds at Cantor Fitzgerald. He was born in New York and grew up in Baldwin Cove on Long Island. He graduated from Maria Regina High School and Manhattan College, where he was captain of the baseball team. He was involved in organizing and coaching youth sports and he was the president of the New Canaan Baseball Association. He leaves his wife, Patricia; daughter, Kathleen; and sons, Joseph III, Matthew, and John. "He was everybody's best friend. I know he was mine," his daughter said.
Profile courtesy of WWW.BOSTON.COM.
By Rhoda Amon
STAFF WRITER
September 30, 2001
Joseph Coppo could have made the majors; he was that good a pitcher. Drafted by the Cincinnati Reds out of Maria Regina High School in Uniondale, he chose instead to go to college, marry, father four children and coach his sons on championship teams.
He would not have had it any other way, those closest to him said.
"He lived for baseball," said Patricia Coppo, his wife. "His sons loved having their father as coach. He would even volunteer to coach teams that his children were not on. Our children were the most important in the world to him."
Coppo, 47, died on the 104th floor when the first hijacked plane struck Tower One of the World Trade Center. He was vice president for municipal bonds with Cantor Fitzgerald over the past year.
Raised in Baldwin, he had specialized in California municipal bonds and had previously been a partner in Municipal Partners. He lived with his family in Los Angeles and San Francisco for 13 years before settling in New Canaan, Conn., seven years ago.
"Joe was the heart and soul of New Canaan youth sports," said his friend and fellow coach Dick McRedmond.
Coppo's team in the Babe Ruth League for 13-year-olds won the championship this year, besting 22 teams from six Connecticut towns, and Coppo went on to coach the all-star team. Both teams of 13-year-olds came in their jerseys for a memorial Mass for their coach at St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church in New Canaan on Sept. 22.
The New Canaan Basketball Association, which Coppo helped found, has renamed its tournament the Joe Coppo Kickoff Tournament, McRedmond said. "But baseball was his first love. He knew baseball inside out, and he had the right perspective. He wanted the boys to learn to play baseball and have fun at the same time. He never put pressure on them to win."
More than 1,500 turned up for the service, Patricia said. "All four children spoke about their father to standing ovations. He was loved by many," she said.
After learning about the first plane crash, she called her husband at his office, but got no answer, she said. She could not bear to watch the scene on television, she said.
The former Patricia Brennan of Syracuse plans to continue to be a stay-at-home mom, deeply involved in community activities, as her husband would have wanted. A daughter, Kathleen, 22, attends Fairfield College, and a son, Joseph, 20, is at Boston College. The other sons are Matthew, 18, and John, 13.
Coppo graduated in 1975 from Manhattan College, where he was captain of the baseball team. His mother, Eugenia, lives in Baldwin, and a sister and brother-in-law, Mary and Hal Anderson, live in West Islip.
Copyright © 2001, Newsday, Inc.
Coppo joined Cantor Fitzgerald less than a year ago, after the giant bond firm bought out a small, successful company co-owned by Coppo that traded in municipal bonds.
Coppo moved into Cantor's offices on the 104th floor of 1 World Trade Center, the north tower.
On the morning of Sept. 11, the father of four was on the phone with a close friend from California. At 8:48, he abruptly cut into the conversation.
"He said, `A plane just hit the building. I've got to get out of here,''' Coppo's son, Matthew, 18, recounted.
That is all the family knows.
Matt's brother, Joseph, 19, went to Cantor Fitzgerald's information center at a hotel in lower Manhattan, but could learn nothing about his father.
Coppo was the captain of the Manhattan College baseball team in the early 1970s, and imparted his love of sports to his children. He coached youth baseball and basketball in New Canaan.
"For him, everything centered on us,'' said Matt, a senior at St. Luke's in New Canaan.
"He taught us a lot of things through sports. He never forced us, but if we didn't go out for something, he'd ask why. He used sports as a base point."
Coppo's wife, Patricia, is a homemaker, and his daughter, Kathleen, 22, teaches school in Rye, N.Y. Joseph is a sophomore at Boston College, and the youngest, John, 13, is an eighth-grader at St. Luke's.
--The Hartford Courant
Published October 22, 2001
"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.
NY Times
View/sign Joseph Coppo's Guest Book provided by the New York Times.
