Berkeley County: The Winds of Political Change

Byron Earl Copeland was born on September 6, 1941, the fifth child of working-class parents in the rural area of Lee County, S. C. He grew up on a farm and attended Lynchburg Schools, a small school in a small agrarian county in the PEE DEE region of South Carolina.Earl graduated from Lynchburg High School in 1959. He attended a small community business school before deciding to apply for an airline job. He enrolled in Universal Airline Career School in Miami, Florida. Upon completing the course, in 1963 he applied for and was hired by Eastern Airlines in Charleston, S. C. He worked for that company for twenty-seven years, until the company declared bankruptcy in 1991.While working for Eastern, he coached youth baseball, and became interested in politics. He wrote a youth sports column, and letters to the editor for the local weekly newspaper, Hanahan News, about local political issues. The editor invited him to write a freelance political column titled One Man's Opinion, which he did for several years.In 1975 four days before the city election, the candidate he was supporting for mayor met with an untimely accidental death. A group of his supporters asked Copeland to allow his name to be entered as a write-in candidate since it was too late to have his name included on the ballot. Some members of that group had previously approached Copeland about running for mayor, but he had decided against it. He agreed, and four days later he was elected as mayor of Hanahan.During his time as mayor, he took a leave of absence from Eastern, but returned to his career at the end of his term. Afterwards, beginning in 1986, he served five terms as Chairman of Berkeley County Republican Party. Following Eastern's demise in 1991, he worked on the staffs of two South Carolina governors, Carroll Campbell and David Beasley.Copeland joined the staff of Congressman Henry Brown following the 2000 campaign in which he served as Grassroots Campaign Coordinator. When Senator Tim Scott was elected to Congress following Brown's retirement in 2010, the new congressman invited Copeland to join his staff. Copeland retired from serving on Senator Scott's staff in December 2013 at the age of 72. At age 82, he continues to serve his community in voluntary capacities, serving on two nonprofit boards.