Stanley Draper

Stanley Draper (1889-1976) was born in North Carolina. Draper had actually gone to college to study music and had initially set out to start a career as a choir director, but as fate would have it, that career never materialized. After a childhood spent farming and writing for the local newspaper, and a stint in the military during World War I, Draper at the age of 29, found himself in Oklahoma City in 1919 after taking a job with the Chamber of Commerce.

Despite not knowing what a chamber of commerce was when he accepted the job, Draper would see many successes in his early years with the Chamber. One such early success came when Epworth University, after closing its doors in 1911 and moving to Guthrie, OK, returned to Oklahoma City in 1920 after lobbying from Draper. Draper, along with chamber president Ed Overholser, went on to secure a $1.5 million endowment fund to assure the school's survival. The school, now named Oklahoma City University, remains in operation today.

In 1923 Draper lobbied to have the city’s name changed. Unofficially the city had been known as Oklahoma City, but officially it was called Oklahoma Station. Draper's lobbying led to the name officially becoming Oklahoma City.

Another area in which he was at the forefront was aviation. Not only did he help gain support for the new airfield that would later become Will Rogers World Airport, but he also famously kept airmail going in the city. Because there was a requirement on the minimum weight of mail, he often wrapped bricks and sent them to friends around the country so that Oklahoma City’s air mail could make weight.

Draper would be involved in a number of other high profile events in Oklahoma City’s history throughout his career. He was instrumental in bringing Tinker Air Force Base to Oklahoma City as well as the Cowboy Hall of Fame, now known as the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. He was also one of the primary driving forces behind the great annexation of the late 1950s/early 1960s which saw Oklahoma City grow from around 80 square miles in 1959 to over 475 square miles by 1961, making it the largest city by land area in the United States at the time. Draper retired from the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce in 1968.

Stanley Draper was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1957 and later served as vice president of the Oklahoma Heritage Association, which oversees the Hall of Fame, after his retirement from the Chamber. Lake Stanley Draper is named for him.