I’ve known Sean Copeland for more than 20 years. I placed him a number of times and he was also a client of mine from time to time. We weren’t bosom buddies or good friends. I guess I’d call him a business friend. I’m in the kind of business that I only run into people when they need me… either to help them find a job or help them find an employee. But it is amazing how I’ve gotten to know so much about so many people over so many years. It is not uncommon for me to help them find their first or second job and follow them through their career, not only as they change jobs, but as they raise their families and grow older. I remember when his 11-year-old son was born.

One of my associates told me Friday that Sean and his 11-year-old son were killed in Nice, France last week, and asked me if I knew him. They were the only two Americans to be murdered there. It’s kind of amazing that of only two Americans, they would have ties to Dallas.

Sean was a good guy. He talked about his kids and his family and they were always more important than business. I called Sean about a year ago to see if he was happy in his job and he said that he was. I hadn’t spoken to him since. As I say, I go in and out of people’s lives, depending on the need.

This terrorism thing, the murderers of a policeman… the murderers of anybody for that matter, should touch us all, but they’re a little more shocking and hurtful when you personally know the people. It is sobering to think of how all of those people in France and the victims of the shootings here in America had close relatives and friends even as distant as I was to Sean.

And the folks in this world who don’t want to admit that evil exists don’t know how to explain this kind of thing. These kinds of murders should not happen, but they do. Evil does exist and it does try to steal souls in these outward manners as well as more subtle ones.

These kinds of things put the normal function of business that we throw ourselves into every day, thinking it is so important and all-consuming, into perspective. I’ll pass by Sean’s name in the database from time to time and I’ll leave it there and offer up a little prayer for his soul and that of his 11-year-old son too. The world is mysterious.

And, as hard as it is to do, I will pray for the guy that murdered him also. I really don’t want to, but I will.