I promise this newsletter is not all about people who die. However, this week is going to be about another person who has died. We lost my high school speech teacher, Coach Copeland, this week. He was a mainstay in my hometown. A beloved football coach. A family man. And a damn fine comedian.

I only had him for one semester. I don’t even know if he would have recognized me if we would have seen each other again. Doesn’t matter to me if he would have remembered me or not. I remembered him.

He started every class with this poem that he recited from memory. If I’m not mistaken, I believe he even had the saying stitched onto a throw pillow which he kept in his classroom. It went:

“This is the beginning of a new day.
God has given me this day to use as I will.
I can waste it or use it for good.
What I do today is very important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it.
When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving something in its place I have traded for it.
I want it to be a gain, not a loss.
Good not evil.
Success, not failure, in order that I shall not regret the price I paid for it.”

It was cheesy at the time, but it really stuck with me. I mean really stuck. Every single one of those words live in my brain to this day. I cannot remember where I put my keys or what I had for dinner. I constantly forget to reply to texts. I will forget people’s birthdays and my own age. But somehow, I can remember every word to this poem from my tenth-grade speech class from 2003. When I heard Coach died this week, I wanted to know more about the source of this mantra, this prayer, that began each of our classes.

Growing up in the conservative Christian town of Mesquite, Texas, I assumed this refrain was from the Bible. If not, I figured it was at least Bible-adjacent. Turns out that assumption was incorrect. It is the words to a poem formerly called, “A Salesman’s Prayer” – later renamed “A New Day” by a Texan accountant/car salesman named Heartsill Wilson. Because of course it was.

Even if the words weren’t from the Bible, I have absorbed them like gospel. I think about them when I’ve lied lazily on the sofa for a full day, or when I’ve spent eight hours helping clients. I’ve traded a day of my life for this day – was it worth it? In both cases, yes. I think sofa-lying time is just as important as productivity time. Self-care, baby!

Coach Copeland was also the first person to share with me this Teddy Roosevelt quote:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Again, I remember most of this quote verbatim, yet I couldn’t remember the route I took on my walk earlier today. It meant that much to me. Whenever I am faced with criticism, which as the podcast grows, is becoming more frequent, I plan to turn back to this quote. Not just the words, but the person who taught it to me.

Coach Copeland was, to put it plainly, a real hoot. He had a leather face with deep crevices cut into it from decades squinting his striking blue eyes toward a football field. He had a laugh that sounded wicked but pure. When something got him tickled, his cheeks and eyebrows would draw up, and he would wheeze from deep in his belly.

My career is lawyering, but my passion is storytelling – on the show, in writing, with friends and family. I love a funny story well told. The semester I spent in Coach Copeland’s class was less a speech class and more a masterclass in storytelling.

In addition to his inspirational quotes, he captivated us with his Vaudeville-style pun stories. He once told what I have learned is called “the longest joke in the world.” It involves a talking snake and a lever that could bring about the end of the world. He told the whole, long-ass thing and held everyone’s attention to the very end. He got a laugh, too. Not an easy feat with a crowd full of high schoolers.

These long stories would’ve been completely obnoxious except for that infectious laugh that got even a room full of teenagers on his side. Side note: I don’t know how teachers do it. Kids and teenagers are scary to me. But Coach Copeland came in with cool confidence. A man like that, with his polo shirt and a face open and kind but weathered, you just knew. He had seen some shit. He wasn’t afraid of our dumbasses. He commanded respect, and he commanded the room. He also seemed to get a real kick out of us, too.

Aside from those two quotes and a few of the pun stories, I don’t remember a single thing I learned in that class, not from the books anyway. Everything Coach Copeland taught us was by virtue of his presence. I learned to be a great speaker because I got to hear him speak. His comedic timing, delivery, and unshakable commitment to the bit all stuck with me.

I’m sure we also had to do speeches in there. That was the name of the class after all. I just can’t remember any of them. What we learned the most was from just listening, which is a lesson in itself.

Miss you, Coach.

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This piece first appeared in Sunday Morning Hot Tea. Subscribe so you don’t miss another piece.