To new heights – Harry
Draper on and off the ground
Harry Draper
was a classical violinist from Tennessee who studied at Chicago Conservatory,
DePauw University, the Royal Conservatory in Leipzig, Germany, and the Neues
Conservatory in Vienna, Austria. When Draper arrived in Dickinson in September
1936 to become the chairman of the music department at Dickinson State Teachers
College (DSTC), he promptly wrote a note home to his mother in his hometown of
Springfield, Tennessee, using a postcard with the image of the campus buildings
on the front.
|
On the back he wrote:
Monday,
6 PM
Dear
Mamma-
Attended
a faculty meeting at 10 this AM & have spent most the time since looking
for rooms, will probably get located tomorrow. Have a nice studio in which I
will also have my class work. It gets hot during the day, cool at night. Most
streets are gravel so somewhat dusty. My office is in the large building. Love,
Harry
Draper’s tenure at DSTC was relatively short, but during his
half-dozen years in Dickinson he had, nonetheless, a profound and positive
impact on the college and the community at large. Dedicated to his music, he led
music camps and clinics, formed alliances with the city in a cooperative effort
to bring top-quality talent to Dickinson for performances, and directed live
orchestra and chorus performances on KFYR radio, among many other endeavors.
One could say that Harry Draper heightened the cultural experiences of the
people in the region. But Harry had another way of heightening experiences. He
was also a pilot, and one of, if not the,
first to photograph the DSTC campus from the air.
|
In the April 29, 1941 edition of the DSTC student newspaper,
The Slope Teacher, an unnamed student , who had apparently gone flying
with Draper, wrote:
…The
College on the hill you’d never know it. The windows glistened like diamonds;
would that the same brilliance be reflected within. I had a wonderful
perspective of the city from there. The large flat-topped buildings were
particularly conspicuous. The dump grounds were a perfect circle. At fifteen
hundred feet Rocky Butte was not so imposing. Highway No. 10 stretched
ribbon-wise away in a haze…
Harry Draper himself wrote an article for The Slope
Teacher titled “High on a Windy Day.” He began his article with this
sentence: “Yesterday I worked on the problem of how high is up.” The article
outlines his experience of reaching an altitude of 9,300 feet in “the faithful
Aeronca plane of the Dickinson Aero Club.” He wrote:
Here
was an unusual view, looking down a mile and three quarters on Dickinson.
Visible details were the College, High School, court house, hospital, Roosevelt
school and Rocky Butte. Two steps away was South Heart. Looking up, I still
wondered how high it really was.
Just months after America entered World War II, Draper
became the executive officer of the Civil Air Patrol in Dickinson, which held
its first organizational meeting on March 12, 1942 at the Stark County
courthouse.
A brief article published in The Billings Gazette on Wednesday,
March 11, 1942, reads:
Draper
encouraged pilots with a certificate in any class to attend the initial meeting
of the Civil Air Patrol. He said that flight training would be adapted to the
experience and training of the pilot. Included in the training was searching
for simulated lost aircraft, courier missions, reconnaissance patrols,
formation flying and other services related to civilian defense. First aid,
military drill, air-raid precautions and routines, airport protection, and
military courtesy and discipline are topics included in the training program.
Shortly after the Civil Air Patrol was established in
Dickinson, Draper left to serve as a pilot in the war, according to his
longtime friend Margaret Parker. After the war, he returned to Tennessee where
he pursued a long and successful career in the music industry. Harry Draper
died in 1993.
- Shanna Shervheim, Institutional Archivist
