cope myron

Maureen Marsteller says her baby’s first words were a spot-on impression of Myron Cope.
She and her husband, Dan, always listened to Cope’s radio show at dinner. Their first-born son, Doug, did, too. At 8 months old, he didn’t have much choice.
Anyway, the sign-off each night was always the same: “This is Myron Cope … on sports.”
There was always that long, pregnant pause before the last two words. And, one night, little Doug decided to fill in the blank. Maybe his first real words came out more like “on ‘ports,” but those were the first words he managed beyond a babble.
Marsteller shared that story as the last caller on Cope’s last nightly radio show on WTAE radio in 1995. The show had run for 22 years, but she was a first-time caller, and for sharing that precious tale she was awarded the last “Cope-a-nut.”
“Talk about thrilling moments. It does sound bizarre, but that will be a lifetime memory, a memory for our whole family, that we shared.”
A few years after her call to Cope, when her son was still a teenager, they met the man and he remembered the call about the baby’s first words.
Marsteller, principal of Oakland Catholic High School the past six years, was in a doctor’s office in Oakland yesterday when the television in the waiting room announced Cope’s death.
Then she began calling her family.

post-gazette.com


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