Alexander George Draffan, Jr.

Alexander George Draffan , Jr. was born in New Haven, CT and grew up in East Haven, CT with his parents, Grandmother, 3 siblings and a village of aunts, uncles and cousins.  In his high school years he attended Notre Dame High, spent a year in a Franciscan seminary and graduated from East Haven High School. Alex then went on to Fairfield University, earning a degree in Biology. Throughout his high school and college years he worked as an Emergency Room Aide at Yale New Haven Hospital.

Alex started graduate school at Adelphi University on Long Island in 1967. On the first day he met Merry, who had come to New York from Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, hoping to meet a nice Jewish boy.  To pay tuition he was both a dorm leader and teaching assistant.  Alex and Merry were married in Garden City, NY in December, 1968. His graduate thesis was typed on an Underwood typewriter in a tiny apartment back in Walla Walla where Merry was finishing her Senior year of college.

Graduate studies in Microbiology continued at Stony Brook University on Long Island where Alex did research and was a teaching assistant. Our son Alex  E. was born at this time and although we had no money we had great faith in the future and it was a good time in our lives.

The future did arrive in 1976 with a first real job and our second son, Jonathan. Alex’s positions included research, customer service and product management in Clinical Diagnostics. He developed the first test for Lupus and worked on developing diagnostic tests for auto immune diseases and allergies.  Places of work included Cold Spring Harbor: Long Island, Carter Wallace: Princeton, NJ, Melloy Diagnostics: Springfield, VA, Cetus Corp: Oakland, CA, Microscan; West Sacramento and Hycor Biomedical; Huntington Beach, CA.

Alex loved his family, flying a small pane, riding his red Honda scooter and driving through the backroads to see what was growing in the fields and to see the sunset. He had a strong love of the desert, especially Anza Borrego State Park.

He will be loved forever by his wife Merry, sons Alexander E. (Staci) and Jonathan, grandchildren Tyler, Alexis and Ethan, sisters Joyce Krupp (James) and Denise and many cousins, nieces and nephews. He was pre-deceased by his brother Douglas.

A Funeral Mass will be celebrated at  St. James Church on Wednesday, April 6^th at 10 AM., followed by internment at the Davis Cemetery,  with Fa Andres and Rabbi Wolfe officiating.