Seren (Captain) Shalom Bareretz (Sam Copelan) serving this summer on the Israel/Syrian Border
Seren (Captain) Shalom Bareretz (Sam Copelan) serving this summer on the Israel/Syrian Border

When 2014 began, West Wendover High graduate Sam Copelan was well on his way to completing his Master’s degree in record time.

With a good 70 percent of his studies completed in the first year of the normally three year course, the former all state line backer and 2005 WWHS valedictorian figured to spend most of 2014 writing and polishing his thesis.

Life however got in the way.

wreccoolad (1)Copelan, a captain in the Israeli Army Reserves, was first called away in February for six weeks of training on the Golan Heights and the Syrian border.

A month after he returned to civilian life, he was called up again back to the Syrian border during the Operation Protective Edge took on the Gaza Strip.

The day Copelan returned again to civilian life, his studies were again interrupted in August when his parents Howard and Corinne Copelan arrived in Israel to see their three children and two grand children as well as delivered video games to the border villages along the Gaza Strip.

SVF-POSTER-2015-printonYELLOW-page1-1The elder Copelans stayed three weeks and when they left the year Sam had set aside to write his thesis had eroded to four months.

The interruptions did no however end.

On the trip back to America Howard Copelan suffered a heart attack and his plane made an emergency landing in Spain. The couple spent a week in the hospital in Barcelona while Sam negotiated with the airline for an extended ticket.

Then a week after the elder Copelans returned, Howard Copelan was stricken with toxic shock and fell into a coma.

centra“ I was the logical choice to come and help,” Sam said. “Anna, my sister, had a toddler and a newborn baby to take care of. Arieh my younger brother,  had just started university. I was just working and writing my thesis.”

Sam returned to his Wendover home in mid-October and spent the next month helping his mother and tending his father.

“I really didn’t think about the thesis for that month,” he said.

“We really didn’t want him to interupt his studies,” said his mother Corinne Copelan. “But when Sam sets his mind to do something, he does it. He was a tremendous help to me and my husband as well as our youngest son Louie.”He finally returned to Israel and his thesis in late November, with less than two months left to complete the project.

He did, and received a 95 percent grade.

He will formally receive his Master Degree with honors in Political Science this Summer in a ceremony at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv.

jrgolf