Let It Be Me

Thirty Years Ago
One of the most fascinating aspects of interviewing Michael Copley is that despite his best efforts, there exist questions about his past which he has not thought of before, nor has he placed his childhood in adult perspective. Asked why his parents chose to adopt, he replied, “I don’t know. I’ll have to ask my mother.”

“At Eaglebrook there were lots of kids with important parents, and the name Copley didn’t mean much to them. I went to school with Edsel Ford’s son, and with Charlie Scripps from the Scripps newspapers, also Chris Harte, whose father owned newspapers in Texas. I managed to finish out the ninth grade at Eaglebrook, but I hacked around too much later at Andover. I wasn’t the type to work hard.”
— “SLOW FALL FROM FOXHILL,” Eleanor Widmer, July 6, 1978

Twenty-Five Years Ago
Dear Matthew Alice:
I noticed that a package of M&M’s I purchased recently claimed it was the official snack food of the 1984 Olympic Games. Come on now, does this really mean that Carl Lewis will be munching on these candies between long jumps?
Sally Ruffin
La Jolla

Want to buy an official toothpick of the 1984 Olympic Games? How about an official shoehorn? Sorry to disappoint you, Sally, but those choice items — actually sold at the 1980 Winter Olympiad in Lake Placid — won’t be for sale next year in Los Angeles. Their absence is the result of an effort by the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee to decommercialize the events.
— STRAIGHT FROM THE HIP, Matthew Alice, July 7, 1983

Twenty Years Ago
“In school, one’s parents, literature — everything tells you that beauty is only skin deep, and yet all of those people defer to you, because you are beautiful. If you fail at something, you can always think, Well, at least I’m beautiful, and people appreciate that. And in the end, your beauty becomes insidious. I didn’t finish college. I went to UCSD. I can’t say that being lovely caused me to quit learning, but I am convinced that if I had been ugly, I would have felt pressure to develop myself intellectually.”
— “LET IT BE ME,”Abe Opincar, July 7, 1988

Fifteen Years Ago
The San Diego Police Officers Association and the police department are back in court again. This time it’s about new police chief Jerry Sanders’s refusal to let a police officer charged in a shooting look at an Internal Affairs investigation package prior to a Shooting Review Board hearing. Harry Eastus, the association’s president: “The word we got was that the [refusal] had come from Chief Sanders, but when I later had a personal conversation with him, he said he didn’t know anything about it.”
— CITY LIGHTS: “SHOOTOUT AT THE POA CORRAL,” Thomas K. Arnold, July 8, 1993

Ten Years Ago
Afterward, among the congregation, there was much speaking in tongues. It sounded like this, “Shad-dee deed moshee dah shedah shebah rah-bah bah-bah-bah,” and “Tee-mee sah-lee tah-bah may ree so nah rah nee fee-lah.” (Two examples I tried to transcribe as best I could.)
— SHEEP AND GOATS, Abe Opincar, July 9, 1998

Five Years Ago
When I walked into Cheetahs to do a story, they weren’t thrilled. It was a Saturday night. The club was packed. The music was loud, and the strippers weren’t too interested in talking. I came back on a Wednesday. Manager Barry Bogart said, “The Reader did a story on us a while back that wasn’t too positive. I don’t think we need another story about the club.”

I explained that this was a music story, and all we were concerned with were the tunes. He reluctantly let me talk to some of his dancers, patrons, and the DJ.
— “STRIPPERS DON’T DO COUNTRY,” Josh Board, July 3, 2003