Longtime EVG reader Scuba Diva shares the following...
After a long, 10-year-battle with cancer, Richard Kopperdahl died on Sunday afternoon a little after 4.
He was 83 and had managed to keep the cancer in remission for several years with the help of his oncologist, Dr. Hai Sun Park. ("Hi, Sunshine," Richard liked to call her.)
He was generally in good humor about it, and always managed to make it up the hundred stairs to his home. He had lived in the same sixth-floor apartment since 1976.
He went once, even twice a day to the Odessa on Avenue A — all the waitresses loved him. Yesterday morning I went to tell the waitress there he'd passed, and she said she had visited him when he was in Beth Israel last week. When she came into his room, he saw her, recognized her, and said, "Oh, I don't need anything else."
There's a viewing Friday evening at the Peter Jarema Funeral Home, 129 E. Seventh St., from 5-9 p.m.