Happy 100th Birthday to a Hardware Legend

TODAY is an important day in hardware history.

100 years ago, on May 7, 1926, Gene Copeland entered this world “just-a bawlin’ and squawlin,” as he would say. My father was born just a few short weeks after Queen Elizabeth, who by comparison never amounted to much.

Unfortunately, my father didn’t live to celebrate this milestone. He died in 2022 at age 96. The picture above was taken in 2014, when Dad was 78 years old. But he threw himself a 100th birthday party, saying, “I want to celebrate 100 now, while my friends are still alive and Bethy doesn’t have to wipe the drool from my mouth.”

People brought him cards and little presents. Ricky cooked steaks on the grill. And when we were through eating, my brother shot potatoes high in the sky with an air gun so we could watch them splatter on the pavement. Great fun.

I know my father loved me very much, even though he wasn’t the kind of dad who came to father-daughter tea parties or exchanged butterfly kisses with his eyelashes. But he taught me how to wire a toggle switch. That’s something. And when he auctioned off my dog Sergeant, I cried so hard that my father went back and bought my dog back. (True story.)

Last week, I heard from an old family friend in McPherson who had just finished my book. Then, he wrote me an email:

Your dad was so good to me when I was rehabilitating my aged dental equipment setup in Dr. Price’s building as a freshly minted DDS starting a solo private practice. I could “load up” with parts on Friday and he’d open a ticket, settling up [the bill] the following week when I returned the items I didn’t have to use. He knew ways to diagnose and troubleshoot problems my dental techs didn’t know, and he had great suggestions on improvements to inadequate mechanical setups. He was one of our favorite patients and got to know all our staff very well.

Soon after the dentist set up shop, he became our family dentist. And now I wonder if that was something my father planned as another way to help out. It doesn’t matter—he was a wonderful practitioner. And now, after 40-plus years in private practice, the dentist has retired.

I have been thinking about the dentist’s email over the past few days, maybe because I recently celebrated a birthday myself. The question I’ve been mulling: I wonder what people will write about me on April 27, 2065?