From contributing to national defense to teaching, researching history, business and community involvement, Christina Yetzer Drain ’75, a 2021 inductee into the SHS Hall of Distinction, has touched the lives of untold thousands of fellow Americans.
While at SHS Christina was a member of the Whippet band and played basketball, tennis and volleyball and ran track. She also photographed for the Scarlet S yearbook and the school newspaper.
For six years Christina served as an Air Force intelligence specialist. Posted in West Germany she taught enemy aircraft, surface to missile and tank recognition as well as evasion and escape techniques for airmen who might be downed in Soviet territory.
After military service she moved to Florida where she directed the Navarre Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and saw membership grow by 300 members in three years. She also was a reporter and columnist for the Pensacola News Journal and for nine years taught and advised Pensacola State College media students who won three national and eight state awards for excellence. She earned her journalism degree from UMass Amherst in 2011.
Returning to Ohio, Christina worked at Ohio State University and wrote for the faculty and staff newspaper, then moved to Ohio State- Mansfield where she worked in marketing, then program coordinator for the Math Literacy Initiative.
Christina retired in 2021 from Mansfield City Schools after serving as site coordinator for a federal grant funded middle school after school program.
In Shelby she gives back by teaching genealogy classes and presents local history lectures. She founded the Shelby Cycle Historical Society, and serves as historian for Shelby Bicycle Days. Christina chairs the Shelby Historic Preservation Commission, serves on the Oakland Cemetery board and is restoring the Oakland Mausoleum.