Charlie Copeland Thinks We Have No Memory.
Oh, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. Charlie Copeland is once again claiming that help start the Challenge Program:
In 1997 Andrew McKnight & I started the Challenge Program to provide training opportunities for at-risk youth in the Wilmington vicinity. Most of these young people have been adjudicated and/or have no high school diploma. You can check out our wesite here.
The News Journal ran a nice piece on our work with the Children’s Museum, which is just opening and is located on the Wilmington Riverfront in the old Kahunaville spot. My thanks to Challenge Program Board member, Jackie Ivy, for helping make the connection to the Children’s Museum as well as my thanks to the Children’s Museum for working with us. It was a fun project.
Charlie Copeland must think that we have no memory of anything that transpired more than a year ago, and I don’t blame him, since time and again Republicans have invented their own new fantasy reality where President Obama is responsible for the entirety of the national debt, and where it was Obama that caused the financial collapse that occurred on Bush’s watch, and the Fox News audience have bought it, hook, line and sinker.
The problem is, we do have memories. We have old blog posts to refer back to. And let’s go back to an October 20, 2008 post from our wonderful colleague Tommywonk to refresh our memories about Charlie Copeland and the Challenge Program:
The [Challenge] program’s website tells a somewhat different story [or at least it did in 2008, before it was scrubbed no doubt on the instruction of Charlie Copeland–DD]:
The Challenge Program originated by offering small craft workshops to at-risk youth in 1995. Since then over 700 students have built and learned to paddle small boats at our Wilmington boat shop. Once a part of the Kalmar Nyckel Foundation, the Challenge Program obtained a separate 501(c)3 designation and a dedicated board of directors in 1999.
While it is true that he serves as the president of the board, the program had already been running for two years at the time Copeland claims to have founded it.
But I don’t have to refer to a couple of websites to refute his claim. I am personally familiar with the creation of the Challenge Program, which was founded in the 1990s by a good friend, and then Winterthur wood conservator, Mike Podmaniczky. I was working in city government at the time, and Mike came to me for advice on how to get started. The program was initially called The Challenge at Fort Christina, and was absorbed into the Kalmar Nyckel organization within a year or so before being once again spun off as a separate non-profit. A master craftsman was brought in to teach boat building as a way to develop carpentry skills.
I am pleased to see that the program has continued with Mike’s original vision of involving city youth in developing the craft of woodworking. They do stunning work, in contrast to the more usual practice of training folks to hang sheetrock.
Charlie Copeland can be commended for supporting the program and serving as board president. That’s what wealthy people should do in our society. But my friend Mike, who is still listed as a board member, deserves the credit as the true founder of the Challenge Program. Even the original logo, the sketch of a wooden boat frame, dates back to his creation of the program.
Charlie Copeland has made his role in the program a centerpiece of his campaign, particularly in the City of Wilmington. If Copeland said he simply led the program, I would not give the matter any thought. But his claim to have founded the Challenge Program doesn’t hold water.
Tommy is right, Copeland deserves a lot of credit for involving himself with the Program and serving as the Board President. But he keeps trying to rewrite history to pretend that the program was his idea, his vision, and his initiative. And that is deceptive, especially when used as a centerpiece of his campaign in 2008 for Lt. Governor to sell himself to Wilmington city residents. Since the Challenge website has been scrubbed of the paragraph that Tommy referred to back in 2008, and since Charlie is once again back to claiming that he founded the program, I guess we should expect to see those Copeland for Governor signs pretty soon.
Next you’ll be telling us Al Gore didn’t invent the Internet.
Seriously – Charlie has been putting out a sour and extremist vision for a while now, not to mention the whole “denial of reality” thing. He really has extinguished any political credibility he may have hoped for.
You mean the financial collaspe that Bush and Bernanke prevented. We never had one thanks your hated crew.
What did that rant have to do with Mr. Copeland?
Copeland was at beginning of its current incarnation and part of that founding board. I don’t think your quivelling with words is meaningful. What is the point? I guess it highlights his years of involvement and shows how petty some people are.
Hahaha. Now Bush saved the economy!!! LOL. See what I mean about fantasy reality of the Republicans?
The point is Charlie feels the need to revise and augment his involvement with the program. He did not found it. It was not his idea. He deserves credit for working on the board all this time, but why lie about founding the program?
And why lie repeatedly? He was caught two years ago in this lie, and now he is back at it again.
You mean the financial collaspe that Bush and Bernanke prevented.
You can thank Bush for making the bailouts necessary.
You can thank Bush for making the bailouts necessary.
And for making them as untransparent and screwed up as possible.
It is true that Mike Podmaniczky started the original Challenge Program to build 10 hour canoes working with students at Howard High School. I’ve never debated that. Then Mike brought in Andrew McKnight to take over. Due to funding and decreased interest in building canoes, the program began to collapse and so was absorbed into the Kalmar Nyckel (and I was a Board member at the Kalmar Nyckel). As the ship was being built and Andrew would raise funds, the ship often used those funds for construction rather than the canoe building class. Andrew knew of a program in Philadelphia that was using HUD money along with grants to rehab houses. He approached me and said that he’d like to spin off from the Kalmar Nyckel, stop building canoes (since we had a few dozen rotting on the property), and begin rehabbing houses. He asked if I would work with him to constitute this new program for Delaware and serve as Board Chairman. We kept the Challenge Program name and Mike Pod served on the Board for many years.
Oh, and I had no part in the creation of the Challenge Program’s website, although I don’t expect to have many believers who regularly read this site, but that isn’t my problem.
A simple story, really. Sorry you were confused. I’ve answered this before in public. Any questions, please let me know — try posting at http://www.resolutedetermination.com.
Thanks!!
I wish President Bush didn’t get so focused on the War that he neglected to push the financial reforms that his adminsitration recommended to Congress. That is his fault. The fact that Democrats and some Republicans bought off with sweetheart loans and lavish contributions blocked it is their fault. Too act as if the financial mess is some how the result of Bush policies is dangerous because it sets us up for a repeat.
Democrats were at least as much of the problem. That is why two years later they still have no solutions.
RD: YOu know how your side keeps accusing Clinton of having stolen their ideas? Deregulating the financial services industry was one of them. Don’t be so shy about claiming credit for it, as you do those policies that worked out less disastrously.
Otherwise, what you’re saying is that Democrats should have stopped this lousy Republican idea. Which is what people here say pretty much all the time.
Just check out the Internet Archive Wayback machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.challengeprogram.org