I am the second son of Lula Bell Copeland, who was born in 1938 the youngest of seven children to a truck farmer working forty acres in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee.
She taught me what’s important in life from an early age with illuminations like, “wish in one hand, and shit in the other….you’ll only ever have shit unless you work hard!”
She left home at the age twenty with an eighth-grade education and my older half-brother. They eventually ended-up in Michigan by way of California and Ohio where I was born in 1962. I grew-up Downriver, a suburb south of Detroit, where my two younger sisters and I attended Flat Rock High School, and in 1980 I was the first person ever in my family to receive a diploma.
I attended Schoolcraft College in Livonia Michigan until 1983 when I joined the United States Air Force. I was stationed at Tinker Field in Oklahoma City and worked as an Accountant for the 552nd AWACs Air Wing.
By 1988 I had been honorably discharged, graduated from the University of Central Oklahoma with my Bachelor Degree in Accounting, and had been recruited by Johnson Controls as General Accountant for their Uniloy Division in the Village of Manchester Michigan.
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