Longtime Vashon educator
By Alvin A. Reid of the American
The late Vivian Emma Dreer will be honored during a memorial service at 10 a.m. Saturday, January 28, at Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church on the city’s north side.
Dreer, a teacher, counselor and community activist died on January 13, 2006 of congestive heart failure.
The daughter of the late Dr. Herman and Mary T. Dreer and sister of the late Clarice Dreer, Vivian Dreer was born on July 21, 1916 and grew up in her beloved Ville.
Her father wrote two novels after moving to St. Louis from Virginia in 1914 to teach at Sumner High School.
She was raised in a home where education, religion, black history and art were part of her daily life, and would continue to be throughout her life.
She attended Cottage Avenue Elementary, Sumner High School and received a bachelor and master’s degree from Fisk University. Upon graduation, she taught English Literature and drama at Vashon High School from 1939 to 1958 before moving to New York City where she received an additional master’s degree in counseling.
In Dreer’s narrative published in “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” she said she took a leave of absence from her job at Vashon in 1948 “because I was disenchanted with segregation in St. Louis.”
“I didn’t want to teach students that life would be equal, or that they would get social justice, when it wasn’t true.”
She worked for the Urban League in Cleveland and wrote scripts for a radio program called “The Urban League Hour,” which often featured Langston Hughes.
While in New York, she became a College Discovery Counselor at New York City Community College in Brooklyn, a position she held for over 16 years.
Upon retiring, she returned to St. Louis where she remained active in several organizations including the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority where she was a past president, The Booklovers’ Club, the Julia Davis Library, and Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church.
Dreer also became active in the Civil Rights Movement with the St. Louis chapter of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE).
“We tried to open up public facilitates, like restaurants,” she wrote.
“I would picket or do whatever they assigned me to do.”
She leaves behind to celebrate her life, her brother-in-law John Davis Senior, niece, Carol Randolph Jasmine, nephews, John and Alan Davis, grandnieces, Jennifer, Alauna, Martye, Brooke and Tari, nephew Bryan, great grand niece Blayne and a host of relatives and friends.
The Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority is hosting Dreer’s memorial service at Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church, 4673 Labadie Avenue.
In lieu of flowers, the family is requesting that any contributions be made to the Herman Dreer Scholarship Fund c/o of the Scholarship Foundation at 8215 Clayton Road, St. Louis.
