Hunter Copeland, step- father of Courteney Cox Arquette
deb...@comcast.net
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
JEREMY GRAY
News staff writer
Hunter Copeland, retired executive director of the Alcohol and Drug
Abuse Council in Birmingham, died Tuesday. He was 86.
Mr. Copeland, a decorated veteran of World War II, was the father of
five children and four step-children, including actress Courteney Cox
Arquette.
Mr. Copeland, of Mountain Brook, left a career as a mortgage broker in
1981 to help people overcome the addiction he said almost ruined his
life.
His addiction developed, he once told a reporter, partly because of the
"three and four martini lunches" that were a part of life in 1950s
corporate America.
"I honestly felt there was no way I could do my work without alcohol,"
Copeland told The Birmingham News in 1981.
In the mid-1960s, Mr. Copeland entered a hospital for treatment of
depression, where he realized alcohol was the root of much of his
sadness.
In his later years, he sought to help other business people overcome
their own addictions.
He urged business owners not to fire alcoholic employees, but to
encourage them to seek help.
He worked with ADAC until about five years ago, according to a
daughter, Diane North.
Even after retirement, Mr. Copeland reached out to those battling
addiction.
"He was always being called to give advice or counseling or an
intervention," North said.
A stroke about a year ago and a battle with mouth cancer had slowed him
down, North said, but the desire to help never wavered.
"I just want to help others from going down like I did," Mr. Copeland
said in 1991.
"Before, I hated myself, and I've learned to like myself. I would like
for them (addicts) to start liking themselves by realizing that they're
not giving up something, but gaining something," he said.