Drew Geoffrey Kopf (Born: July 30, 1946), is an American business man, artist and writer, who is described by his mother, Shirley Florance Schwartz Kopf (Born: November 11, 1920) and others, as a "Renaissance Man." He started, has owned and has been running his company, which does business as The Mat King, since 1988 and includes among its clients almost every level or branch of government in the United States, many major corporations in almost every field of endeavor by helping to solve safety, soil control and image enhancement concerns including high risk life threatening conditions that often require unique and failsafe solutions.
Drew Kopf plays full court basketball three mornings a week from 6:00 AM to 7:30 AM with men in their 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's and a few, like him, in their late 60's or 70's. (Ok, he gets picked last when the teams are being chosen each morning. But, if he has a "good day" on the court, his performance can be the difference between which pick up team wins and which one loses that day). He plays golf in season with friends and participates in several charity golf outings each year. He served on the golf committee of the Northeast Region of the American Kidney Fund for nine years.
Drew Kopf paints in oils as well as in watercolors with landscapes, still lifes and portraiture among his favorite genres. In the year 2000, while on a vacation trip in France, he developed a desire to sketch and paint to help him deal with, if not to take the place of, directing plays, which he had put on the proverbial "back burner" after he started his business The Mat King. A major focus of his artistic endeavors has been the creation of watercolor paintings that he gives as part of his gift to youngsters whose families have invited him to attend their youngster's Bat (which means: "daughter of the") or Bar (which means: "son of the") Mitzvah (commandment) ceremony; which is similar to a confirmation ceremony.
He calls these art works "Sedrah Paintings" because the word "Sedrah" is what the sections of the Old Testament that are read in an annual cycle are refered to as. In his Sedrah Paintings, he incorporates the elements mentioned in the sections of the Old Testament and in the Writings or the Prophets that the youngster will be chanting before the entire congregation on his or her "big day" and about which the child may also be delivering a brief talk. Drew, who at one time early in his life had studied for the rabbinit, also writes a Biblical commentary on the Sedrah (Biblical portion) and includes the printed piece in a special pouch on the back of the framed art work.
Drew Kopf writes restaurant, movie and play reviews along with beat assignment and opinion pieces on occasion for the Jewish Post, which is an ethnic newspaper in the Greater New York Metropolitan area.
Drew Kopf was born to American-born parents, Shirley (née Schwartz) and Harold Kopf, in Columbia University Medical Center, Harkness Pavillion, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City on one of the hottest days of the year 1946. His birth was something of a "special event" not only because of his being his parents' first child but because the delivery by Dr. Edward C. Malloy was particularly challenging to where it got written up in a medical journal of the day because the baby was both upside down and backwards, which would normally have involved a surgical procedure, but which Dr. Malloy was able to accomplish by reaching in and, with infinit care, turning the baby until Dr. Malloy could effect what then became a "normal" delivery.
When Drew Kopf was about eighteen months old, his mother, Shirley, had been "airing out the bed clothes in one of their apartment's windows when she caught young Drew while he was "climbing around" on the bed linens, which probably made a very attractive "mountain" to climb but which could have easily ended in his falling out of the open window to his death.
The oft told story continues with Shirley, while holding her little "explorer" in her arms, calling her husband Harold on the phone at work and telling him what had just happened regarding their son. At that time in New York City, there was apparently no law requiring the installation of window guards to protect young children from falling out of apartment windows. Landlords and building managers discouraged the use of any devices that needed to be secured to windows by use of screws or other devices that would eventually deface or ruin the window frames. Shirley challenged her husband by saying, "Harold, you had better come up with a way to get window guards on our windows or something horrible is going to happen to our little boy!"
Harold Kopf stopped everything and, after a considerable amount of trial and error, invented what he eventually named the "Guard-Rite Window Guard," which was a cold rolled steel assemblage of bars, brackets and bolts that customers could install by themselves in their apartment windows without having to mar the widow frames with the drilling of holes or by the use of screws or any other such mechanical devices. The pressure fit exerted by the bolts squeezing against the bracket brace units and secured by counter locking bolts held the Guard-Rite Window Guards in place permanently or until someone wanted to remove them.
Harold Kopf applied on April 19, 1948 for a patent for his safety window guard and was given US Patent Number US2459884 on January 25, 1949. In 1950, Harold Kopf's brilliant and life-saving invention was awarded the Lewis and Conger Annual Award for Safety. He was in good company since other recipients that year who received a Lewis and Conger Safety Award included the rubber suction cup based safety bath mat by Rubbermaid and the safety pressure cooker by Presto.
Drew Kopf's father would continue solving problems by inventing things and developing new toys and games for the better part of his life. Some of Harold Kopf's brilliance and tenacity resulted in things that touched millions of people in the most positive of ways. Who knows how many thousands of youngsters were prevented from accidentally falling out windows because of Harold Kopf's Guard-Rite Window Guard? Surely millions of little girls and boys enjoyed making pot holders from cloth loops using the Davis Toy Company's Adjustable Loom for which Harold Kopf received US Patent Number US 2632938 A on March 31, 1953.
The example Harold Kopf set for his son had a profound effect on Drew. Making something out of nothing became a driving force in Drew Kopf and has remained so for his entire life. Envisioning how a scene will play out on stage before the play is even cast is Drew Kopf's rare and, in some ways, amazing ability. It is that same ability that allows him to design websites that really work. It is what made Drew Kopf take up a sword and become, not just a competitive fencer, but a sabre fencer, and, later, a fencing coach and a teacher of the sport of fencing, and the winner of a Bronze Medal in Men's Sabre at the Empire State Games held in Syracuse New York in 1979 and to participate in the National Fencing Championships held at the United States Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs later that year. It is similarly what makes him work with more than five hundred different vendors to help develop solutions to his clients' problems in his day-to-day work as The Mat King, which harkens back to the combined objectives to save people's lives and to positively effect those lives by providing the right product for the right application and, where no appropriate product is available or exists, to create or bring about the creation of such a product.
The driving force that was perhaps kindled by his father's almost constant work on new ideas for games or the solutions to known problems came to a kind of head when Drew Kopf was in Junior High School and wanted to enter the school science fair. He needed a "science" project. Most, if not all, of the other students in school who entered the "science fair" (read: "contest") based their projects on one of the standard science class experiments, like showing how this and that chemical when mixed together made smoke, or how oxygen makes an slice apple turn brown. That kind of "paint by number" approach was not of interest to Drew Kopf. It might have been the "influence" of his father that made Drew want to do something more original, more scientific and more "discovery" oriented. But, it was certainly his father who had Drew contact the United States Government which sent him a pamphlet entitled "Inventions Wanted by the Armed Forces." One of the "inventions wanted" was for something that would allow railroad freight cars to be made from light weight aluminum instead of the far heavier steel. The reason railroad cars were made so heavy was so that when the cars were empty they would still hold the tracks as the train rounded curves. Light weight cars would be more apt to derail under such conditions.
Drew Kopf envisioned the use of very strong electromagnets that would be installed underneath each box car directly facing and nearly touching the steel train tracks below and designed so that each car's magnets could be graduated in terms of how much strength they would apply depending on the weight of the load each car was carrying at that time.
Young Drew Kopf demonstrated his "invention," which became the crux of his "Science Fair" project, by affixing permanent magnets to the bottom of a small model train that could run back and forth on a few feet of train track that Drew had installed on a piece of thin plywood. Drew would hold the wood-mounted train track so the track and the model train were on top and would alternately dip each end of the assembly down and then raise them up again, which allowed the little train car to roll freely from one end of the track to the other. He would then demonstrate how his "invention" could hold the train to the tracks by actually turning the track and train concoction completely upside down while continuing to run the train back and forth. The little train car would keep rolling back and forth on the railroad track as if completely defying the force of gavity; like a magic trick if not like a miracle. The little train car was being held onto the tracks entirely by magnetic attraction.
For his creativity and ingenuity, Drew Kopf received an "Honorable Mention" by the Science Fair directors, who were, of course, the science teachers in the school. Only kids who did the "paint-by-number" projects by copying science "experiments" right from their science text book were awarded actual prizes.
That was the first time that Drew Kopf had experienced the rewarding of mediocrity over independent and creative thinking and it must have made a deep and longlasting impression on him. But, rather than driving him to get into lockstep with his fellow classmates not to mention with his teachers, who were in charge of such events and activities, the experience catapulted Drew into becoming something of a maverick who would seek ways, even in the most elementary or relatively unimportant activities, to focus on the solving of real problems or the development of new ways to help address those problems.
Drew Kopf submitted his electromagnetic-based "invention" to allow railroad freight cars to be made of lighter weight materials to the Federal Government and received a letter that thanked for his having done so and commending him on his idea.
Today, Electromagnetic Track Breaks are used on trains to help in the breaking prosess by offering additional stopping power to that providded by the traditional Track Breaks that relied exclusively on friction to reduce the speed of railroad vehicles.
More demonstratively, Maglev, which is a word derived from magnetic levitation, is a transportation method that uses "magnetic levitation" to move vehicles without touching the ground. Maglev vehicles travel along a guideway using magnets to create both lift and propulsion, thereby reducing friction and allowing the vehicle to reach fairly high rates of speed.
Drew Kopf was apparently decades ahead of the development of Maglev and of the Electromagnetic Track Break but, when people ask the inevitable "what if" when he relates this story, he just says, "I guess when I was thirteen I was on the right track."
Scouting was an activity that also gave Drew Kopf a good deal of praticle knowledge while, in a different way, also provided him with some insight into what he would eventually understand to be "the way of the world."
The "Knot Tying Merit Badge" was instituted by the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to encourage young Scouts to learn how to tie various types of knots and to become proficient enough know which knot to use to accomplish a particular task. However, the men who volunteered as leaders of Troup 405 in Seaford on Long in New York either misconstrued the BSA organization's goals and objectives or had objectives of their own beyond those of the BSA. After all, these men were all Veterans of World War II; trained soldiers. They had to have used knots and had to have known their value.
But that was apparently not what Merit Badges were about for these GIs. The scouts were given Merit Badges for making displays that included depictions of what knots were supposed to look like, labels that told the tale of the tape and for putting the whole thing on a piece of wood covered with an old potato sack glued to it to make a nifty background. It looked terrific.
Did the Scouts have to demonstrate that they could actually tie even one of the knots; a Square Knot for example? They did not. Did the Scouts have to show the Scout Master that they knew what the knots were supposed to do or how to use them? They did not.
The displays these Scouts made were all that was necessary to "earn" for themselves the Boy Scouts of America Knot Tying Merit Badge. Anywhere else, with Scout Masters who were defacto teachers, the Scouts would have to truely demonstrate their own knot tyiing ability and to expond upon the use of each knot.
There are maxims that may come to mind when reflecting on Merit Badges and what they really represented. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" could be one. "Looks are deceiving" and "You can't tell a book by its cover" are perhaps others. How other awards, degrees and accolades that are supposed to mean so much to us in our society, may be just so many "merit badge" fiascos depending on which schools awarded them could make us wonder what such signs of achievement really mean.
Drew Kopf used these and other similar experiences to help gain an understanding of where he stood relative to almost anyone he might meet. Take nothing for granted nor at face value. Never "ASSUME" anything because when you do you make an ASS out of U, and ME.
Teachers who spoke like truck drivers stood out to him as anacranistic. Was that the example to which we were supposed to aspire? We were told to spell correctly and to use proper grammar, but the "professors" who were teaching us were often unable to pronounce the words, even if they could spell them, and simple "deez and doze" instead of "these and those" gave teachers away as late comers to the sophistications that an advanced education might offer but with only a rudimentary exposure to it at best, and zero effort to make corrections.
During World War II, The US military was known for producing what were called "90 Day Wonders," which was a derogatory term that referred to newly and hurriedly produced officers who went through Officers Candidate School (OCS) rather than through one of the military academies such as West Point. In fairness, it was that kind of full-out "never-say-die" reaction to desperate conditions that helped save the world from one of the worst scurges ever known on earth; the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria).
After the war, instant everything rapidly became the way of the world. Instant coffee and soup or minute rice helped make time a commodity. Just add water. Magic bullets against all sorts of medical threats started to become the expected norm. Records were getting broken in sports, the arts, science, law, business and in almost everybody's personal life with self-help programs and do-it-yourself projects of every stripe. It was a time of "Anything goes."
It was also a piviotal time in Drew Kopf's life even as many of the elements surrounding him were becoming more and more in flux. He was preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, which was to take place in mid-August 1959, when his mother gave birth to her fourth child, Lawrence Lewis Kopf, in mid-May of that year. Spencer Warren Kopf, Drew's kid brother, had been born in 1950 and was almost nine years old at that time. Lois Lorraine Kopf, Drew's kid sister, had been born in 1956 and was about 2-1/2 years old then and, as the only little girl among eight grand children on their mother's side, Lois was quite the "celebrity" and got tons of attention.
The three bedroom split level home in Seaford, Long Island, NY, was already pretty packed when the new baby arrived. Tranquility was not something that was common in the Kopf family. And then, with next to no warning, financial instability threw a stressful and frightening gloom over everything and everyone in it when Harold Kopf lost his job. To put it mildly, things in the Kopf household were in a bit of a tizzy. |
