Norman Sydney Draper 1923-1996

Norman served in the Navy during WW2, as a radio engineer. He decided to join the Overseas Baptist Mission after WW2, and met Sheila Wesley-Smith during missionary training. They worked for ~40 years in Papua New Guinea and Netherlands New Guinea (now West Papua) from 1949 until 1994, as missionaries who learned several languages (Sheila wrote and published 2 dictionaries), and recorded significant anthropology material which was later used by many global professors in completing PhDs, as well as implementing foreign aid projects. The Adelaide Museum holds significant donations accumulated during their time in PNG. Newspapers in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide often published articles of their work during the 1950s. Norman was very friendly, a visionary, and was very creative in finding ways to build bridges with the native peoples they worked with.