Bill Kopit

My son, the youngest of my four children is more of a worrier than his sisters. He asks me how you figure out what you want to do with your life. I have thought of telling him to talk to my wife, as I usually do.

Leaving Davis, I had no idea what college to apply to, or what to study, but Dan Minton said his older brother Dick had gone to Bucknell, and had liked it. I went, sight unseen. The name sounded kind of like Cornell. Thirty years later I read in Philip Roth’s autobiography that Dick Minton was Philip Roth’s best friend at Bucknell. Go figure.

Anyway, Dan and I headed for Bucknell, which turned out to be more beautiful than I imagined, although in the middle of nowhere. Bob Scott was there as well, and was our class president for all four years.

I was pre-med, as my mother said I should be, but I couldn’t get beyond dissecting the frog, and I switched to economics. When time came I thought graduate school was a better option than Viet Nam, and I enrolled in Columbia Law School. My favorite courses involved antitrust-I got to use my economics background.

Then, John Kennedy said "ask not" so I went to Mississippi as a civil rights lawyer, and then  enlisted in the War on Poverty in Washington, in part because the traffic was better than in New York. There are many more people now, but its still not quite as bad as New York.

When I finally realized, at my father’s urging, that had to find a paying job, I lucked into a new federal program to develop things called Health Maintenance Organizations at what was then the federal Department of Health Education and Welfare. One of the guys I met there, Steve Epstein, also a Mt. Vernon kid, but from private school, started a new health law firm called Epstein Becker& Green. In 1976 I was the sixth lawyer to join. There are a lot more now. Because nobody wanted  to do health care antitrust I got to do it. I am still doing it.

I am going to tell my son you just have to plan ahead.