the Conference of State and Provincial Health Associations of North America for his long and meritorious public health service. Virginia Health Commissioner The only State Commissioner of Health that Virginia had ever known, Dr. Ennion Williams, died in 1931, leaving a large void because of his reputation and influence in other states. Dr. Draper was selected by Governor John Garland Pollard to temporarily fill the vacant position, arousing political ire over the selection of someone from outside the state. The governor, himself irritated by the criticism, had these words to say: Complaints about Draper being from out of state were hardly valid. Not only was he living in Cherrydale in Arlington County, Virginia at the time of selection, he had lived in Virginia while doing work at the two military installations during World War I and lived there again after the war while organizing county health departments, residing in Richmond in 1921 when his daughter was born. The governor also pointed out to his critics that specialists in the field of preventive medicine were scarce compared to practicing physicians, and it was not unusual for these specialists to go where there was a demand. Dr. Thomas Parran, from Maryland, for example, was an Assistant Surgeon General in the Public Health Service who was sent to New York to be the state Health Commissioner under Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. One of Draper's biggest challenges as the state health commissioner was to get appropriations from state legislatures for public health. He had the worst time trying to get money for the control of venereal diseases because, as he said in a 1963 interview: the fine men who came from the rural areas and made up the General Assembly...didn't like to hear about things like syphilis and gonorrhea. They just weren't mentioned. Deep in their conscientiousness was the conviction that any person who had overstepped the laws of morality and spiritual righteousness deserved what was coming to them, and to help miscreants out of the troubles visited upon them by God was just something you didn't do. Draper had to work very carefully in regards to venereal disease control, but other aspects of his tenure as Virginia's health commissioner worked very smoothly. The state kept a close liaison with the Hygienic Laboratory when problems arose which they could not handle, and the laboratory would sometimes send experts down to help them, and at