Guadalajara, Mexico
1974
“OK, so I ask to borrow the book. Borrow, you understand.”
Bart was at it again, holding court. Could anyone tell an anecdote better? He had that delivery, that Bill Cosby thing going. He picked out things in everyday life, little absurdities, ironies. It was a Sunday night, and Bart was hanging out with the guys, Rick, Lawson, John. None of the others could match his jokes, his knack for telling a story, apocryphal or not, to highlight an absurdity, and just be damn funny. Maybe it was the setting that gave him so much material. What he and the others were engaged in was a serious enterprise, to be sure, but here they were, in their mid-20s, studying medicine in Mexico for Chrissakes. They were attending med school at Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara (UAG) with its more liberal admission standards.
“Borrow. A book. Just—a book. From Brian,” continued Bart. “I needed to borrow it, you understand. It was mainly for this one chapter.”
The guys grinned and listened. Bart Slepian shared an apartment with a married couple who were also in the med school. The husband’s name was Brian. He was pleasant enough, but Bart did not get along at all with Brian’s wife.
“And so Brian says, ‘I don’t see why not,’ and he turns to his wife. ‘Can Bart borrow the book?’ And she says, ‘Well, you know, we, ah, paid for that book.’”
Pause.
“And the husband said, ‘Well, he’s just going to read it. He’s just going to read a chapter. Just the one chapter.’” Pause. “And she says, ‘Well what if he reads the whole thing?’”
The guys roared.
UAG was a strange place to be back then. Most of the students were local, but there were also about 2,500 Americans down there. The Americans didn’t really associate with the Mexicans, who were mostly kids, right out of high school. Bart made the most of life there. He always caught the Sunday American movie carried on a local TV station. Sometimes it was a classic western, like High Noon with Gary Cooper. His favorite was The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance.
Rick became the mouthpiece for their group, because Bart’s Spanish was, to put it charitably, a work in progress. Bart was 28, not quite six feet tall, maybe 170 pounds. He wore big round glasses, had unruly hair that was receding, and did not yet have the beard he would grow in his thirties. Jogging kept him slim, but he did not have a particularly athletic build. Still, Bart had a sharp mind, the sense of humor. He could be very charming with women and he dated American students here and there. Bart also used his modest appearance to his own benefit, turned it into a strength, a game. His exterior masked sinewy strength.
He was also a bit of a con. Actually, a lot of a con. A hustler. He took his act to a local pool hall. Bart did not look especially hip or cool. He wore schleppy T-shirts, jeans. He’d linger around the tables until challenged to a game.
“Well, O.K. I guess.”
Bart would toy with the opponent, just hold his own, let the bets grow, and grow—then run the table and send the other guy home with an empty wallet. His buddies took it all in, stifling their laughter. He played backgammon with friends like Lee and Brian, for high stakes. For a time, arm wrestling, of all things, became his best con of all. Early days at the school, he challenged Rick to a match. They set up at the table, locked hands.
“You ready?” said Bart.
“Yep.” Someone yelled, “Go!”
It was over. Bart’s first move was lightning, so quick and sneaky that Rick had barely felt his arm tense with anticipation before the back of his right hand was flat on the table. They tried again, and again Bart won. He was the best arm wrestler any of them had ever seen. He beat all comers, took some money in side bets, too. In second year, after beating some of the local Mexican students, national pride came into play. A hulking guy was brought forward by the Mexicans, his arm the size of a man’s leg. Even cocky Bart looked taken aback by the ringer.
“Uh, Bart,” said Rick. “Sure you want to do this?”
“Not a problem,” said Bart.
“Bart, this guy’s gonna break your friggin’ arm.”
It was a raucous scene in the cafeteria, the air of a championship fight, gringos lined up behind their unlikely-looking-butundefeated champion, Mexicans behind their mountainous local boy (who may or may not have been an actual student). Bets were down. John, Lawson and Rick all knew that Bart surely didn’t stand a chance. But they bet on him anyway. The two combatants locked hands, Bart’s hand swallowed by his opponent’s, the roar from the spectators grew. At “go,” Bart was already on top, accelerating as he always did. This time, he was overmatched, even the quick start wasn’t enough. He lost.
Chapter 4 ~ Silent Scream
Walter Kopp attended Berkeley after graduating from Redwood, en route to the University of Colorado for his master’s in hospital administration. What would Jim do? His roots required that it be something special. His father had once told him that one day Jim would be a small part of something very big.
Jim was convinced that his forefathers’ experiences were indicators of his own destiny. A great-grandmother on his mother’s side was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian, “a strikingly beautiful woman.” His maternal grandfather, Walter Leonard, was a physician who counted Hollywood stars such as John Wayne among his patients.
He believed his was a family of survivors in a country founded by survivors—the disenfranchised, mavericks who had either fled or been kicked out of the Old World. His mother, Nancy, had Irish heritage—but Jim liked to stress that her background was “Black Irish” (Irish who had dark hair and eyes as descendants, according to legend, of Spaniards who landed on the Western seaboard of Ireland in 1588, after surviving the defeat of the Spanish Armada.). He would talk of how a grandmother on his mother’s side survived the great earthquake of 1906 as an eight-year-old. His paternal grandfather, Charles Sr., survived a gas attack in France during the First World War. He had come to America from Austria to escape anti-Semitic pogroms and, upon arrival at Ellis Island in New York Harbor, he shortened the family name from Koppensteiner to Kopp. Jim liked to claim that his grandfather spoke “every continental language” and worked as a translator in Alsace-Lorraine interrogating POWs for the allies during the war. He died young, at 42, from chronic health defects due to the gas attack.
Jim admired his father greatly—the doctor of laws, corporate lawyer, former Marine. Chuck Kopp had won the Award of Merit from the San Francisco Bar Association, was a leader of the Boy Scouts of America. With his political connections and influence, Jim believed his dad to be a “maker of kings.”
Politically he had conservative roots. His parents were solid Nixon people. Jim said that his father had worked to help put Richard Nixon in the White House and, later, helped Ronald Reagan get elected governor of California. In the living room hung a photo of Chuck Kopp with Reagan at a reception. Jim said his dad was offered a post as a cabinet aide in the first Nixon administration, but turned down the offer because moving the family from California to Washington was too big a move. Later in his life Jim believed that he could contact former Nixon administration officials for advice, or to vet potential enemies.
It was a fact that in December 1969 Nixon appointed a man named Jesse Steinfeld as his surgeon general, and that Steinfeld had lived across the street from the Kopps back in South Pasadena when Jim was a boy. Jim told the story that his dad helped smooth the way for Jesse to land the surgeon general’s position by putting in a good word for his old neighbor. Many years later, reached on the telephone, 76-year-old Jesse Steinfeld said that the story was possible, but he could not remember it specifically.