Two Decades of Students Give Retiring Choir Director Surprise of a Lifetime

Bob Drafall is retiring as State College High School’s choir director and music coordinator after 19 years, and it seems he touched a lot of lives in those two decades.

A group of about 100 former students, colleagues, friends, and family secretly assembled a choir concert in his honor, coming back to State College from around the nation.

The choir, which is essentially an all-star team of Drafall’s students from his time at the school, gathered in a Penn State choir room on Saturday afternoon. Drafall was blind-folded and driven to the campus Music Building, unaware of where he was going or who he’d be meeting.

When he reached the room, the choir was singing upon his arrival. And when the blindfold came off, he saw a sea of familiar faces, many of which he hadn’t seen in years. There were students from each of his 19 graduating classes, with representatives from his first in 1997 to one soon-to-be graduate he currently teaches. 

“I walked in and heard the singing and it was magical,” Drafall says. “It was shocking and then as I looked at people and I realized how far they are from here, from California, Washington, Colorado, Louisiana. Some of these people I haven’t seen in 15 years and they’re literally from across the country, so it was just really touching to know they would rearrange their lives to go back and be a part of this.”

The students weren’t just there for a surprise choir concert for Drafall’s benefit alone. They had also planned a concert to honor him at the high school on Saturday evening. He didn’t know it when he woke up Saturday morning, but Drafall would be conducting the choir at the concert, and the gathering on campus was meant to be a surprise rehearsal. 

The choir practiced four songs for the concert, which they voted on from a list of Drafall’s favorites. From the moment they began singing “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord,” it was clear that something special was happening.

“This is like driving a Porsche when you usually drive a used Hyundai,” Drafall told the choir after finishing the song. 

“It was magnificent and there was really no reason why it shouldn’t be,” he added after the hour-long rehearsal ended. “These people are dedicated and talented musicians. Just the fact that they would care to come to do something like this makes it awesome.”

It might seem like a lot of work to honor a retiring teacher, but 2004 graduate Meredith LeRoy says Drafall is more than just a teacher to her. LeRoy was one of the main organizers behind Saturday’s celebration, along with Drafall’s wife.

“He’s an amazing mentor,” she says. “I went on to be a choir director so he inspired my career. He’s just a really special guy. Not only is he a great teacher, but he’s a phenomenal person and friend and really just a father figure to a lot of us here.”

For Drafall, it was touching to see former students travel from around the country to honor him. He says he often thought about getting a group of former students together for something like this, because a high school teacher gets to plant seeds but rarely sees the end result of their work. On Saturday, not only did Drafall get to see that end result, but he also saw just how meaningful he was to his students.

“I knew absolutely nothing, not one thing about any of it,” Drafall says of the surprise. “I had no reason to suspect anything. So it was 100 percent shock, and a very pleasant one at that.”

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