'A turning point:' How personal losses have shaped Fort Liberty Spouse of the Year

In the late 1980s, Lexie Coppinger was born on then-Fort Bragg.

Decades later she’s returned to North Carolina for the first time since childhood and is this year’s Armed Forces Insurance’s Fort Liberty Spouse of the Year.

Coppinger’s entire life has been spent around the military, she said during a phone interview Thursday.

“I would not change anything,” she said. “I’ve loved living overseas. I’ve loved moving and the whole process.”

Her father, retired Col. George E. Lewis, served in the Army for 28 years, first in the enlisted ranks before completing Methodist University’s Green to Gold Program to become an officer and later retiring from the Pentagon.

Coppinger grew up watching her mother get involved in the community through volunteering.

She said her early years were spent growing up at Fort Bragg until she was 7, followed by eight moves and graduating from high school in Korea.

While attending college and living with her parents when they were stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia, Coppinger met her husband at a barbecue 15 years ago.

The couple eloped a little more than four months after meeting before her husband’s deployment to Iraq. They now how three children.

About a year-and-a-half ago was the first time Coppinger’s husband was assigned to her former home, now called Fort Liberty, she said.

Being named Fort Liberty Military Spouse of the Year

Coppinger was nominated by Holly Vega, the Armed Forces Insurance's 2019 Military Spouse of the Year. Vega works for a nonprofit that fulfills wishes for military kids with heart defects called Military Hearts Matter.

Coppinger has volunteered for the organization.

Out of hundreds of nominations and more than 20,000 votes between Dec. 4 and Jan. 26, Coppinger was selected to represent Fort Liberty. She is one of 84 honorees nationwide, representing all armed forces branches.

Recipients are recognized for dedicating themselves to advocacy and making positive impacts in their communities, a news release stated.

"The Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of the Year award transcends a mere accolade; it represents a vibrant and mission-driven network of military spouse advocates and leaders,” Lori Simmons, vice president and chief growth and marketing officer for Armed Forces Insurance said in a statement.

Armed Forces Insurance will name its 2024 Military Spouse of the Year during a May 9 luncheon in Arlington, Virginia, to celebrate the honorees and National Military Spouse Appreciation Day.

“I almost didn’t accept it because the work I do isn’t to get accolades … It was 30 minutes down to the deadline before I accepted it to represent other military families,” Coppinger said.

Military families face uncertainties like deployments, food insecurity and childcare challenges and remain resilient and should be seen and heard, Coppinger said.

Finding purpose through loss

As a spouse, Coppinger further plugged into the Army by serving in Family Readiness Groups, but two personal losses expanded her involvement, too.

In 2015, her younger brother Kris was killed in a car wreck at the age of 21.

Kris, who was a first responder, was just two months away from leaving for Army basic training, Coppinger said.

Coppinger, who at the time was a personal trainer, said that after her brother's death, she felt lost.

“I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew I wanted to take care of people,” she said. “Kris' loss was a turning point that made me take a look at how I wanted to be sure my life was lived.”

She faced another loss in April 2019 when her brother-in-law, who was in the Army, died by suicide also at the age of 21, six months after returning home from a tour in Afghanistan.

Her brother and brother-in-law's deaths are why she believes people are meant to love each other and why she’s made it her life purpose to support first responders and military families.

Coppinger is the military and family program manager for Operation Gratitude, which is a nonprofit that supports military service members and first responders and has delivered 3.5 million car packages since 2003.

She has helped coordinate the shipment of more than 135,000 individual care packages to deployed service members and more than 40,000 hand-assembled Battalion Buddy teddy bears to military children across the nation who face the deployment of a parent.

The care packages, Coppinger said, remind her of a phone conversation with her brother-in-law a couple of days before his death.

“He kept saying, ‘No one remembered me when I was in Afghanistan,’” she said. “It was something so simple but stuck with him. That’s why at Operation Gratitude we have small care packages, because sometimes that means everything to someone’s mental wellness.”

Regardless of rank, branch, classification, duty station or any other factors, Coppinger said, she believes there is a growing need to ensure service members and their families are not forgotten.

Coppinger said her message to military families is “they're not alone.”

“We're humans and go through challenges all have emotions like roller coasters,” she said. “I think opening up to say, ‘Hey, I see you and am not here to judge but will listen,’ goes far.”

Coppinger said that she thinks military leaders, like retired Maj. Gen. Gregg Martin speaking out about his own mental health struggle, can be impactful.

Martin is the author of the book “Bipolar General: My Forever War with Mental Illness.”

“I think sometimes men feel there’s a stigma that it doesn’t make them tough when they speak about emotions, but I think it makes them strong to be vulnerable to open up about things that may be difficult,” Coppinger said.

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Other involvement

Outside of her job at Operation Gratitude, Coppinger has volunteered in multiple communities to collect, assemble and hand out more than 500 backpacks filled with school supplies, has helped with holiday meals for 50 families and is eager to help other military families in need.

She’s also spoken at corporations, chambers of commerce, Rotary Clubs, nonprofit and community events and has worked with military leaders, Family Readiness Groups and chaplains about the military’s current support needs.

“Service members and their families face a wide range of emotions during deployments, including mental health challenges and feelings of loneliness and isolation,” she said in her application. “Our resources do not reflect the statistics, yet service members (and) families continue to face challenges. With the support of AFI Military Spouse of the Year, I hope to bring these needs of support to a larger light and increase opportunities for both our military and civilian communities to come together in a joint effort to support our service members and their families.”

Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Armed Forces Insurance names Fort Liberty Military Spouse of the Year