Stephen Edmund Copel Obituary

Stephen Edmund Copel attended North Kingstown High School in North Kingstown, RI. View the obituary, post a memory, or share a photo about Stephen Edmund Copel.

Graduation Year	Class of 1977
Date of Passing	Mar 05, 2021
About	Stephen Edmund Copel, 61, died suddenly at home on Friday, March 5, 2021, with his wife and love of his life, Sandy Parsons, by his side. He was born in Elgin, Illinois on August 26, 1959 to Willy and Sharon Copel. Steve married Sandy Parsons on December 17, 2006. Stephen lived in a variety of places while growing up including Algonquin, Illinois; Des Moines, Iowa; Hartford, Connecticut; Manchester, Connecticut; Williamsburg, Virginia; North Plainfield, New Jersey; North Kingstown, Rhode Island; and Wickford, Rhode Island. He graduated from North Kingstown High School in 1977. Stephen began his formal study of art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts and received his Diploma of Fine Arts Degree in 1981. He continued his studies and earned his BFA in Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1995. He went on to earn his MFA in Electronic Art from Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York in 1997. While at Rennselaer, Stephen had the opportunity to work with avant-garde composer Alvin Lucier as sound engineer for Lucier’s 40 Rooms, one of the highlights of Steve’s career. Stephen worked as a bike messenger in Boston and New York City. He moved to Rhode Island where he worked for the Rhode Island School of Design. After completing his degree at Rennselaer, he moved back to Rhode Island where he worked for ATR Treehouse in Providence. It was through his work at Treehouse that he met Sandy Parsons. Stephen moved to Attleboro, Massachusetts and worked as Technical Director at UMass/Dartmouth. He earned his teaching certificate in Special Education at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts in 2007 and taught for several years at Attleboro High School. Stephen first visited Lubec, Maine in 1961. His family made regular summer visits to stay with Ryerson and Lois Johnson. In 1972, his parents bought a house in downtown Lubec, and after that Stephen spent his summers in Downeast Maine. He always considered Lubec his hometown. West Quoddy Head was his “true north” and the location of many happy adventures and beautiful photographs and drawings. In 2004, Stephen and Sandy Parsons bought a parcel of land on Little Seavey Lake in Wesley where they began to build their dream life together. Steve loved Acapulco, Mexico. He and Sandy visited several times, and it was there that he proposed marriage to Sandy. Stephen and Sandy were married in 2006 in a surprise wedding by a woman wearing a lobster suit. They continued to work on the “camp” in Wesley, adding a camp building and eventually niceties like running water and electricity. More buildings were added as well as beautiful flower and vegetable gardens. Steve loved tropical plants, and he added a greenhouse which he engineered to withstand the Maine snow loads. Steve and Sandy moved to Wesley permanently in 2015, and it was like coming home for Stephen. A gifted artist, musician, and sound engineer, Stephen practiced his guitar every day without fail, and he saw beauty everywhere. Sleeping Dog Studios was born from Steve’s drawings of dogs that he created in small sketchbooks while working as a bike messenger. He created the SleepingDogStudios web site to showcase his music and, later, his many beautiful photographs and pen and ink drawings of Downeast Maine. SleepingDogStudios also produced the Lucy Calendar every year, which Steve and Sandy created with their photogenic dachshund in the starring role. In addition to being a dachshund wrangler, Steve was a lifetime cat whisperer—there was no cat he could not tame. Stephen was a caring and gifted teacher who took the time to get to know his students, and he knew how to make learning fun. They loved him, and he would go to the wall for any of them. Stephen kept in contact with his grown students from Attleboro. Stephen will always be remembered for his beautiful photographs and drawings, his musical recordings, performances and jam sessions with guitar, voice, and sometimes dobro and mandolin, his wonderful, wacky sense of humor, his kind heart, and his generosity. He loved his home on the lake and spent many happy hours there with friends and family. Steve and Sandy loved taking photos of the sunrise and moonrise over the lake then posting them on FaceBook. Steve was devoted to his wife, Sandy, and he adored his two dachshunds, Lucy and Phryne. Stephen was predeceased by his father. He is survived by his wife, Sandy Parsons, his mother, Sharon Copel, his sister, Melinda Copel, and her husband, Andrew Kosciesza, his nephew, Aiden Kosciesza and wife Kerri Grogan Kosciesza and their son Aster, his nephew Christopher Copel-Kosciesza, and his many cousins.