The National Campaign

Drew Geoffrey Kopf - Family

 

Family

I am the eldest of five siblings. I am four years older than my kid brother, ten years older than my kid sister, thirteen years older than my baby brother and fourteen years older than my baby sister. Our parents were the son of immigrants from Eastern Europe and the daughter of an immigrant from Czarist Russia and of a second generation immigrant from the Kaiser’s Germany. Our grandparents were all entrepreneurial in their own rights. Our paternal grandparents owned a paint and hardware store in the Kingsbridge section of New York City. I believe they had been farmers for a time and that my paternal grandmother had also worked as a cook for a resort hotel in Catskill Mountains of New York. Our parents knew each other in grammar school. Our mother was a self-proclaimed “tom-boy” who played baseball with the boys when they “needed another man” and she was all there was. Our father worked for his folks, which was apparently not atypical in those days, either minding the store or helping on residential painting jobs they might gotten from time-to-time. They married while our father was in uniform during the Second World War. He had hitchhiked across the country when Pearl Harbor was attacked. His number was picked for the draft and he hitchhiked back home to New York to join the Army. He served in various capacities including as a Guard for Prisoners of War. My siblings and I have each given our parents two grandchildren ranging in age from my sons of 34 and 33 years old respectively to my niece born late in 2003. Our father died in August of 1996 at the age of 76 so he really missed out on knowing three of his grandchildren. One of them was named in his memory according to our cultural and religious custom. My mother is well and lives nearby. She still shows up to work every day in my office, helps baby sit for one of sister's daughters, 6 and 8 year olds, is active in a national non-denomiational philanthropic organization drives her own car and maintains a lifelong loving relationship with her older sister, who is suffering from Parkensons Disease, by making sure that their every-couple-of-weeks get-togethers for brunch followed by their manicures and pedicures take place. I am married and enjoy being “Papa” to my wife’s twin three-year old granddaughters and our newest grandson born just a few days ago as I write this in mid-April 2004. My wife and I enjoy our going to theatre in New York City and taking the occasional trip together. We love opening our home to family and friends at holiday time and for special gatherings. She is a gracious host, keeps a simple but elegant home, is a fierce competitor on the tennis court, loves attending the US Open Tennis Championships and has a wonderfully strong and deep relationship with her brother, sons and daughters-in-law, grandchildren, her aunts, and a slew of cousins and a wide range of friends with whom she has stayed close for decades. She is against my running for President but I tell you she would make a terrific First Lady and I am pretty sure she has surely discussed with one of her cousins what she should wear to my inauguration. By the way, she is from Connecticut, and winter is her favorite season. So, if there is a blizzard during the inauguration, she will feel right at home with it. My first marriage ended in divorce. I was married a second and a third time with each of those marriages ended by annulment after about six months time in each instance.