DRAPER

Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Thursday, July 15, 2010 at 06:56:40 :

Independent Journal
Saturday, July 12, 1980
Page 4

BENJAMIN P. DRAPER

Memorial services are pending for Benjamin P. Draper, 73, of Mill Valley, retired San Francisco State University professor, writer and historian.

Draper died of a heart attack in Craig, Colo., Thursday night while on a research trip for a book “Colorado Theater Tales,” according to a family friend.

Draper had been a professor of broadcast communications. He was an avid longtime scholar of Sir Francis Drake’s voyage around the world and spent 20 years compiling a bibliography of the explorer’s voyage to Marin.

Draper was a writer for the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco in 1950 when he inaugurated the “Science in Action” television series.

The show won the Westinghouse Electric Co. history award in 1958 and the following year the Browning Society Award for a dramatic monologue on Drake’s thoughts during his stay on Marin shores 400 years ago.

Draper became a member of the Drake Navigators Guild and was convinced that Drake landed the Golden Hind at Drake’s Estero in West Marin.

Draper also had inaugurated the “Explorers of Tomorrow” children’s television series.

As chairman of the Broadcast Industry Conference in 1973-74, Draper directed the Pacific Nations Broadcast Exchange, which coordinated the translation and exchange of radio and television programs between the United States and other nations across the Pacific.

During his television years he taught broadcasting at the University of California and in 1963 he started teaching at San Francisco State.

He earned a doctorate in theater arts at the University of Denver, researching the history of Colorado theaters for his dissertation.

Draper was born in Hot Springs County, Ark., as one of six children. After his mother’s death the family moved to Denver and three years later his father died.

Draper studied theater arts at the University of Denver and earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree.

During World War II, he worked in Hawaii as an economic adviser to the military government and then joined t he Coast Guard and spent the last years of the war stationed in San Francisco.

After the war he moved to California where he became a writer for the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

He served as president of the Mill Valley Library Board for four years. In 1963 he donated his collection of photographs of the Colorado mining town of Georgetown to the University of Denver.

Surviving are his wife, Barbara Lee McCracken Draper of Mill Valley; a daughter, Deborah Lee Draper; and a son, Douglas William Draper.