Howard Drago hasn’t let age slow him much in his efforts to make sure things get done.

Every week Drago, 91, packs up his truck with clothes and heads off to the Portland area to deliver them to battered women’s shelters. He also takes paperback books he collects to veterans hospitals in Roseburg and Portland.

At Halloween, he hands out candy, which he purchases himself, to kids. He was president of the Chamber of Commerce in the 1980s, receiving two Community Service Awards, first in 1982 and most recently at this year’s chamber awards dinner. He has also been heavily involved in St. Helens Catholic Church.

Since joining the Sweet Home Elks in 1957, he’s served in every role possible in the local lodge.

Carla Claasen, the wife of Elks member Randy Claasen, said she was trying to clean up after an event recently at the lodge and someone told her “not to worry about it.”

“They told me, ‘Howard will be here in the morning. He takes care of that,’” Classen said.

“I enjoy helping people, helping our town,” Drago said. “You don’t realize what we have and what we can give to help the people in our town.”

Drago came to Sweet Home in 1960 to run the South Santiam Fish Hatchery, which was opening here.

Born and raised in Greenwich, Conn., he went to work after high school making shaving razors for Schick. He also worked as a lifeguard and deckhand on a private island in Long Island Sound.

He was drafted in 1942, during World War II, and spent three years as a medical/surgical technician in the Army Air Forces, mostly in England, where a lot of his responsibilities involved treating wounded pilots who had returned across the English Channel.

“I was stationed for a while on the white cliffs of Dover, in Ippswich,” he recalled. “When a plane came in we had to get the pilot out. They’d come in with no wheels or half a wheel and they would burst into flames when they landed. Our team would have to get him out.

“Sometimes they would crash into the cliffs and sometimes they were knowledgeable enough to make the cliffs. My job was to help anybody who got into trouble in an airplane.”

Transferred back to the United States, Drago was stationed in Oxnard, Calif., and then in the Easten Building in Portland, where his medical team had an office. There he met and married Marvina “Billie” Harris, whose father worked for what is now the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. They had three sons and a daughter. Sons Vincent, a retired principal, and Jim, a teacher, live in eastern Oregon, while Jeff, retired from the Oregon Department of Transportation, lives in Woodburn. Dawn, their daughter, lives in Mexico with her husband, a contractor.

Through his father-in-law’s influence, Drago started working in the state hatcheries, a career that lasted 37 years. He worked at Coos Bay and in Marion Forks, where he eventually was named manager. Then he took over as the South Santiam hatchery’s first manager.

Drago said he’s a little fuzzy on some dates, but he said he retired in the late 1970s. Billie died in 1990, he said.
That’s when he really started getting involved in community activity.

“The biggest thing I’m involved in is with the Elks,” he said. He’s served in every leadership position in the lodge and done “just about everything you can think of up there.” He’s been Elk of the Year, Officer of the Year, Exalted Ruler, Trustee, Honorary Life Member, served in all of the committee chairs, chaired the Casey Eye Institute eye clinic for children and has been named an Honorary Elkette. He still sits on the Board of Trustees.

Darold Bolin, an Elks member who has known Drago for years, said he gives “about 180 percent” of his time and energy.
“He’s done the Sunday breakfast for many years, and he helped me with Bingo every Saturday night for 20 years,” Bolin said.
“He just keeps plugging away. He’s like the Energizer Bunny – You put in a new battery once in a while and away he goes.”
Elks staff member Bonnie Lemons said Drago also buys the groceries for the Sunday breakfasts.

“He’s still very active,” she said.

Drago has collected more than 7,000 soda and beer cans over approximately 15 years to raise funds for the Meadowood Speech Impediment Camp, which is one of the causes the Elks support. He’s also in charge of the Elks program that provides wheelchairs and walkers for those in need, and he’s helped with the all-night Senior Alcohol-Free Entertainment party for graduating seniors at Sweet Home High School.

He is also organizing a golf tournament at Pinewood Golf Course on June 20 to raise money for an eye clinic to be held in Sweet Home, he said.

Hal Hennick, an Elks Past Exalted Ruler who’s been a lodge member for 50 years, said Drago is “just one of those guys you can’t get along without.”

He said on days when the lodge is open Drago will just come in and sit in the lounge and drink coffee, “not saying a word.”
Hennick said Drago’s efforts in organizing the breakfasts at the lodge and at St. Helens have “made those breakfasts real profitable.

“He reminds you of the old lady that’s got all those coupons,” Hennick said. “He goes to Portland, Albany, wherever the best buys are. We get those breakfasts for pennies on the dollar.”

St. Helens member Lin Gagner said Drago has served in a wide variety of roles there too. Those include church usher, Finance Committee member, Pastoral Council, “and he was the pastor’s right-hand man in years past,” she said.
He also has headed the Hospitality outreach and served on the Christmas Baskets Committee, which provides food to needy people during the holidays.

“He hasn’t been involved quite as much because of his age,” she said. “But he’s certainly the goer and doer. For years, if we needed something done, Harold was there to do it.”

Drago, who noted that he doesn’t smoke or drink, said he’s active because he has to be.
“You have to make up your mind,” he said. “You can be inactive and die or you can be active.”
Hennick agreed.

“He’s the kind of guy who has to stay active,” he said. “If he doesn’t have something to do, he goes crazy.”