I would fall out of my wheelchair and snap my oxygen hose off!
(Outside of the laughter, none of that would be true, just trying to paint a picture!)
I just read that he claims he doesn’t know why they called him Coonman. The mind boggles. ;-)
If I were him I would say it was because he was a big aficionado of the hugely popular Top Gun franchise and that they all had their nickname assigned by the other guys. He hated it.