Colleagues, sports icons bid farewell to Chet Coppock at memorial service

ON A RAINY DAY AND MONDAY, Chicago bid farewell to Chet Coppock.

At an elegant church on the edge of Lincoln Park, seven eulogists spoke, including Mark Giangreco, John McDonough, radio baseball reporter Bruce Levine and Chet's children Lyndsey and Tyler. Coppock died April 17, eleven days after being injured in a car accident.

All were asked to limit their remembrances to five minutes. The service, at St. Paul's United Church of Christ, lasted approximately 70 minutes.

The event was well-attended. Most prominent among Chicago sports icons were Bobby Hull, Denis Savard and Dennis McKinnon.

The media phalanx was notable, helmed by a number of former Coppock colleagues including Steve Dahl, Bob Sirott, Marianne Murciano, Chuck Swirsky and Cheryl Raye-Stout, the attention-deflecting producer who teamed with Coppock in the 1980s to craft the pioneering radio sports talk show "Coppock On Sports."

Quietly exuding remarkable dignity and appropriateness was Anna Busalacchi, Coppock's former wife and mother of Lyndsey and Tyler.

In the end, all that could be recalled were the words of the Roman stoic Seneca, who said, "Endeavor rather to rejoice that you possessed him than to mourn his loss."

Chet himself always enjoyed the rejoicing moments.