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George T. Dracker, affectionately known as “Red,” died on February 3 at his home on Dayton Lane in East Hampton. He was 94.
Born in Winfield, Queens, in 1921 to George A. Dracker and the former Amelia Schneegas, he was one of six children. His grandfather, father and brothers were bricklayers who built many well-known buildings in Manhattan including the New York Public Library.
Mr. Dracker would often tell one of his favorite stories about growing up in the Depression: He would run wherever he went including to church for the 6 a.m. mass where he served as an altar boy. A local man who observed his daily run placed a dollar bill in his path for him to find. Amazed, he took the found money, ran back home to give it to his mom for food, and then quickly ran back in time to serve mass.
As a kid, he lived and breathed baseball. In the years of sand lots, he and his brothers, Ray, Al and Bob, along with the local boys would play baseball all day long. Despite being stricken by rheumatic fever that had him bedridden for half a year, miraculously he survived and headed straight back to the baseball field. He and the local kids formed a team called the Winfield Buccaneers and would compete against other teams from Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Upon graduating from Bryant High School, he took a job with E.W. Axe & Co., a financial investment company on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street in Manhattan. The Axes later moved to a castle in Tarrytown, and asked George to live with them, but family and baseball kept him in Queens.
After enlisting in the Navy during World War II, learning Morse Code and serving as a radioman on sea planes, he returned to Queens to marry Ellen, whom he fell in love with through their correspondence during the war.
He attended the Printing Industries of New York, took a job at the Putnam County Courier in Carmel, and later, on a whim, applied for a job at the East Hampton Star. He saw the ad for a linotype operator in The New York Times, took the train out from Queens, and could not believe how far away it was. Owner Arnold Rattray hired him that day in 1947 and put him up for the night so he could work at the paper the next morning. He would typeset the newspaper in “hot type” every week for 14 years.
Mr. Dracker and his wife resided on Main Street just across from the Star office. As his family grew to include six children, they bought property from E.T. Dayton on Dayton Lane where he built a house and has lived since. In 1966, he bought a printing business in Southampton, Long Island East, Inc., and worked there for many years setting type and printing along with his business partner and son in-law, Gregory Bellafiore.
Mr. Dracker was an East Hampton volunteer fireman for 23 years, a Boy Scout leader of Troop 102, a coach of the local women’s softball team, and a member of the Community Council and Most Holy Trinity Church. He said living near the church was a perk and after snowstorms he would clear the sidewalk from his house to the church so his wife could go to daily mass. He loved his garden and reading about history, especially the local history of East Hampton.
Mr. Dracker is survived by a son, George Jr.; and five daughters, Barbara, Patricia, Ellen Mullen and husband Phil, Merilyn Bellafiore and husband Gregory, and youngest daughter Pune; as well as an older sister, Dorothy of Queens; four grandchildren; and 8 great grandchildren.
He was predeceased by his wife, Ellen, in 2014; and three brothers, Raymond, Robert and Albert; and sister Marguerite.
on Feb 15, 2016