To new heights - Harry Draper on and off the ground

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.

When Harry Draper arrived in Dickinson in September 1936, he sent this post card home to his mother in Tennessee.

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.

	This aerial photograph of the Dickinson State Teachers College campus was taken in 1939 by Harry Draper, chair of the music department. Draper was a pilot as well as a classical violinist.

 

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