Posted on 06/01/2010 4:42:27 AM PDT by Puppage
The son of legendary TV newsman Ted Koppel died early Monday after a night of drinking that ended in the seedy Manhattan apartment of a pub crawl acquaintance.
Andrew Koppel, a 40-year-old attorney with the New York City Housing Authority with a history of alcohol problems, was declared dead around 1:30 a.m., according to the New York Post. Police sources told the newspaper Koppel had stumbled two and a half hours earlier into the Washington Heights apartment of Russell Wimberly, a waiter he had met 12 hours earlier in a Hell's Kitchen bar.
A roommate of Wimberly, Belinda Caban, told the Post Koppel was extremely drunk and that they put him to bed, only to find him dead hours later. Wimberly, 32, said they met at a bar on 44th St. and Ninth Ave., striking up a conversation after each noticed the other wearing a similar straw hat.
"He said, 'Nice hat, man,'" Wimberly told the Post. "We got to talking and he started buying me drinks."
Wimberly said Koppel drank straight whiskey, and when he suggested bar-hopping around the city, he sipped from a pint bottle of Jameson as they walked.
"There was a lot of alcohol," Wimberly told the Post.
Koppel was the third of the "Nightline" anchor's four children and their only son. In 1993, he was convicted of punching a senate aide and ordered to undergo alcohol treatment. In 1990, he was in an alcohol-related fender-bender in Maryland.
With deep regret, I must respectfully disagree with you.
I was friends with the most G-rated family you will ever know. Parents were pastors, children were home schooled. A cloistered and safe environment. No internet, no broadcast television; their enterntainment was positive and parent controlled (carefully chosen DVD’s and the like). Think of The Walton’s without all the craziness.
Long story short....One of the kids (out of six) busted out completely. He is no longer with us, due to substance abuse.
One of the other kids is....well, missing. He took a powder after age 18 and his parents have never heard from him since. It’s been over 40 years, so I doubt his elderly parents will ever know what happened to him.
On a rather odd note, not a single one of the remaining 4 children has produced even one grandchild, even though they are all happily married. Go figure.
This pastoral couple is now in their near 80’s and they don’t have one grandchild. Strange.
I congratulate you on your very good fortune. But please don’t make the mistake of assuming that rolling down that “To Do” list is going to get you to the finish line. Sometimes, we parents have to be blessed. And it sounds like you have been.
“Wonderful, God fearing parents can do all the right things, but that doesn’t guarantee their kid won’t go off to college sober and come back the same way.”
This was my thought after reading the post about the six major influences. Yes, you can control all those things when they’re home, but what happens when you send them off to indoctrination centers whose goals appear to be to undo everything their students have ever been taught?
Celebrities and their progency are mostly liberals and as such have this gross sense of entitlement, a feeling that they can do and say anything without any consequences,
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So what is your jiffy quick, pop psych answer for the rest of the untold millions of alcoholics in the US (12 million +)?
I must say, as perhaps among the minority here, that I find it disturbing to learn of so many self-righteous people here.
Ted Koppel was no more my favorite than Obama is now, and everyone around here must now how much I detest that cretin.
But some of the shit I’m reading on this thread about child-rearing simply leaves me speechless. It borders on cruel and nearly hateful. And we FReepers are better than this, I’m positive.
Please, folks...don’t assume that your good fortune is an indictment on someone else’s bad parenting. Not all good kids come from good parents and not all bad kids come from bad parents. If it were that simple, nearly all our kids would be good, don’t you think?
My only child turned out to be a pretty good kid. I don’t say that to boast; I say it out of pure RELIEF. He didn’t have some superior upbringing; I did the best I could and I hit the jackpot.
But that does not mean that some other parent, who cared as much and tried so hard to do the right things, was inferior. It merely means that I had some heavenly help.
Wonderful, God fearing parents can do all the right things, but that doesn't guarantee their kid won't go off to college sober and come back the same way.
You said it best. Kids (and the adults they become) will not always choose the correct path in life.
Just one of hundreds of people the died yesterday under less than honorable conditions. Is this really newsworthy simply because of his name? Not really.
So you are actually still insisting it's the parent's fault? You're an ignorant idiot!
You wouldn't know the truth about how kids raised by loving parents can go wrong if it hit you between your self righteous eyes.
It sounds as though the people he was with at the end treated him with kindness, despite the unfortunate excessive drinking.
No. Not any more.
Dad should have dragged him in to see Bill W.
RIP. Very sad.
I just watched Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart” last night. Sounds about like that. Very ugly to watch, that kind of alcoholism.
One thing I hated about the film is that rehab appeared to take about a weekend and he became clean and sober forever from then on. Riiiight...
"Dragging" alcoholics anywhere is generally a futile effort.
Thank you for sharing reality. A breath of fresh air amidst the “shoulda / coulda” junk that our “wise ones” are so full of.
It truly is “One day at a time”, don...But thank you.
Was he out of the closet?
......and, into the casket.
The “Family Hour” is alive and well on TVLand, Nickelodeon, etc.
I can’t even remember thre last time I watched the networks aside from ‘24’ and the awesome ‘Fringe’.
Very sad.
Agreed. Some things simply cannot be controlled. Even Art Linkletter's daughter jumped out a window on LSD. Everybody knows of great parents who thought they did everything right and tried their best, only to lose a child to drugs or crime.
One thing about parenting - it is ALWAYS "on the job training".
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