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West Pasco Man Says Keeping Busy Cheap Medicine

Cheryl Bentley/SUNCOAST NEWS

At Pasco County Fire Station 21, Louis Kopenkoskey hands them to Pasco Fire Rescue firefighter Jim Bennett, one of several deliveries of his baked goods he will make that day.

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By Cheryl  Bentley | The Suncoast News

Published: July 2, 2008

At 7 a.m., Louis Kopenkoskey's New Port Richey home smells of cinnamon, kneaded dough and sweet things. The 92-year-old Kopenkoskey has been baking since 6 a.m.

Most days, he starts even earlier, at 5 a.m. He has many people for whom to bake, including his doctor, bankers, dentist, optometrist and laboratory technicians who have become friends. He doesn't know all their names, sometimes no more than a first or last name, he said, because he's not much for names, but never mind. His car can almost follow the route by itself because Kopenkoskey makes his rounds usually five days a week, week after week. He usually visits the people on his list once a week, he said.

He is not sure how long he has been delivering his trademark cinnamon buns and other baked goodies such as cakes, pecan rolls, pies and cookies. Probably five years, he said, when he started baking for his physician, Dr. Judith Noel; in Hudson.

But even before making his deliveries, the people on the home front knew Kopenkoskey's sweet touch. He has been baking for sanitation workers twice a week for 15 years. They stop by his home to pick up the garbage.

Today, he is baking for the Veterans Affairs Outpatient Clinic, on Little Road in the New Port Richey area, Pasco County Fire Station 21, in the Hudson area, and the staff at the emergency room at Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point.

Everyone's reaction is similar to that of the firefighters at Station 21, Kopenkoskey noted, when he later dropped off his cinnamon rolls there. When Kopenkoskey sat them on a table, there was only one firefighter in the room. In a few seconds, several others had appeared.

They joked about how even though they loved Kopenkoskey's rolls, their waist lines did not. But no one appeared to shy away from the treats.

"Lou's the man," firefighter Andrew O'Brien said, eyeing the rolls.

The firefighters' warm reaction is typical, Kopenkoskey said. "They're always glad to see me," he said of the recipients of his goodies. "That makes my day."

Sometimes, the five-day-a-week schedule becomes a bit much for the 92 year old, but he hardly ever misses a day.

"Some days, I don't feel like it," he said of his baking schedule. "But I get up and do it."

With his baking, Kopenkoskey is continuing a tradition that began in childhood. He remembers helping his mother knead bread when growing up in Petoskey, Mich., a still small town on Lake Michigan.

Later, in World War II, as an Army staff sergeant, he worked in the bakery of the English luxury liner the Queen Mary when it was transporting troops from Australia and New Zealand. Aboard, the bakers made 1,800 loaves of bread a day.

After the war, he settled in Muskegon, Mich., where he owned Mary's Restaurant for 21 years. There, he baked 15 pies and 30 loaves of bread daily.

He retired to New Port Richey in 1968 with his wife, Marion.

He returned to baking after the death of an Army buddy in Michigan. "He'd get up, light a cigar and sit watching TV all day."

Kopenkoskey linked his friend's death to his life style. "I figured sitting around is no good."

Keeping busy through baking and giving is "cheap medicine," Kopenkoskey noted.

Kopenkoskey has no plans on letting up on his baking schedule. "It's better than sitting around. That's what I figure," he said.

Cheryl Bentley can be reached at 727-815-1069 or cbentley@suncoastnews.com.

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