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got up from an undertaking parlor in Birmingham and walked out,” but the Age-Herald from the time stated that after being treated in the infirmary he was up and about before the race ended. He was drafted into World War I and became an instructor at a training camp at the University of Alabama, then established an automotive company in Birmingham. It soon failed. In 1922 he moved to Chicago to be with his brother Abraham, who was a dentist — and into raw foods and nudism, among other unusual things. Abraham Coplon would have been at home in 1960s Berkeley, Cohen noted. In 1923, Coplon married Rose Sherman. Cohen noted that neither of them “had any attachment at all to Jewish life,” and Rose insisted that Coplon alter his last name to Copelon, making it seem less Jewish. Cohen noted that Coplon “didn’t have as strong an aversion to the Jewish background as (Rose) did. He didn’t have at- Percy Copelon’s gravestone tachment to it but didn’t seek to actively in Birmingham deny it.” Allan came along in 1924, growing up in Chicago until age 6. Due to family instability, he was moved around among Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, but in doing so “got exposed to the entire American Jewish scene” in big communities. His parents divorced in 1932 when Allan was seven years old, and Coplon returned to Birmingham. Allan saw his parents running from their identity, but “no matter how much dislocation he experienced, one thing was consistent — he found himself living with Jewish people.” And that was one of the few things in his life that he could count on. A year with his immigrant grandparents in his mid-teens solidified that identity. When he returned to his mother in California, she had married for a third time, and Allan had to take the last name Segal. As a high school senior, Allan took on his mother’s maiden name, “embracing all the things she was running away from,” Cohen said. He found comfort in Jewish things, while she felt embarrassment. Further complicating identity was his father, whose name was either Percy or Perry, Coplon or Copelon, depending on when it was or who was asking. For the record, his footstone at the Old Knesseth Israel/Beth-El Cemetery in Birmingham reads simply “Percy Copelon 1900-1949.” Allan went to the University of Illinois, writing satirical pieces under the name Allan Sherman. In 1942, his mother sent him to Birmingham to see his father — and to try and get money out of him. He arrived to find that his father, like his mother, had married again, also to someone not Jewish, and they had just adopted an eight-month-old girl. Nevertheless, Cohen quotes other relatives as saying Allan was welcomed “with open arms” by the rest of the family. He was given new clothes from Loveman’s, a tuxedo and a car. His father said he would help him with college expenses if he would go back to the family name, and when he returned to Illinois his columns had the byline of Allan Copelon. Briefly. Allan sent the columns to his father, but never heard from him. “My own father doesn’t care whether I live or die,” he later wrote, and reverted to Sherman. In 1949, he would find out about his father’s death in the newspaper. His pregnant wife was sitting on a bench in New York when she saw the article, and immediately called him. When he called his mother, she had just assumed he already knew. In August 1949, the 357-pound Percy Coplon embarked on a 100day fast to shed 100 pounds, with his brother’s guidance. It was said