Lilian Z. Draper

Draper joined the U.S. Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) in 1943, after graduating from Goucher College, in Towson, MD. She was assigned to work at the Naval Communications Center in Washington, D.C., where naval personnel were decoding Enigma, the secret German submarine code. Draper’s job was to help ensure the electromechanical device used to decode the messages were in top running order. Her work with the Enigma project lasted after the war ended, until 1946. She left the Navy that year as a lieutenant junior grade.

Draper was born April 15, 1921 in Hagerstown, MD, daughter of Ira M. and Josephine Cullen Zimmerman, and grew up in nearby Williamsport, MD. After serving in the Navy, she completed the Harvard Radcliffe Program in Business Administration, which was affiliated with the Harvard Business School, in Cambridge, Mass.; as part of her course work, Draper worked at a textile mill in Manchester, NH. and at Bloomingdale’s Department Store, in New York City. She married returning World War II veteran and architect Earle Sumner Draper, Jr. in 1947. They lived in Seattle; Washington, D.C.; and Atlanta, before moving to Charlotte in 1952.

Draper was an active volunteer. She was a member of the League of Women Voters, and worked for the Charlotte Crisis Assistance Ministry. She also volunteered as a tutor in Charlotte’s then-segregated schools for African-American students. She loved reading biographies and mysteries, and listening to opera.

Draper was preceded in death in 2005 by her husband.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at St. Gabriel Catholic Church on Thursday, January 3rd, at 1:30 p.m. Draper will be buried in Hagerstown, MD.

Survivors include daughter, Margaret Draper, of New York City; son, Norman Draper (Jennifer Sandahl Draper), of Bloomington, Minn.; and grandsons, Samuel and Edward Draper, of Bloomington.