Hop nightclub owner Drach dies

Friday, July 9, 1999 | 9:44 a.m.

John Drach was a survivor.

He survived growing up on the tough streets of New York's infamous Hell's Kitchen, where at age 10 he worked as a shoeshine boy.

He survived playing high school football in New Jersey, where he was routinely knocked around the gridiron by 21-year-old ex-soldiers who returned from World War II and were allowed to complete their high school academics and athletics. Drach eventually played college and pro ball.

During the Korean War, Drach (pronounced Drake) survived the carnage of Pork Chop Hill and received a battlefield promotion from private to sergeant.

With no prior experience, he survived the fiercely competitive Las Vegas nightclub industry, buying the Hop and expanding it from a 1950s-type establishment into a successful multicultural entertainment showcase.

Drach even survived cancer.

John W. Drach, a career truck driver who fulfilled his dream of becoming a horse rancher after his retirement to Southern Nevada in 1988, died Sunday of a stroke at his office at the Hop. The resident of Logandale was 67.

A memorial service will be 5 p.m. Saturday in Palm Mortuary, 1600 S. Jones Blvd.

"I met John in 1996 when he was retired and bored and looking for something to do," said Drach's fiancee and business partner Kay Bignotti, a longtime Las Vegas real estate agent.

"He saw that the Hop had closed and thought it had been a real nice place. He figured he could run it better than the previous two owners so we bought it and opened it on Valentine's Day 1997."

Bignotti, the daughter of three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Louis Meyer and the ex-wife of famed Indy 500 pit crew chief George Bignotti, became the sole owner of the Hop when the property received its gaming license last year.

Drach realized early on that a steady diet of oldies music, the trademark of the Hop since it originally opened in the mid-1980s, was not going to sustain it.

While Wednesdays and Fridays remained '50s nights, Drach brought in reggae on Tuesdays, Motown on Thursdays and rhythm and blues on Saturdays. The innovations made the business a more well-rounded nightclub and has brought in culturally and ethnically diverse crowds.

Born April 6, 1932, in Jersey City, N.J., Drach was the youngest of two children of John Adam Drach, who died of cancer when John was 8, and the former Julia Brossell.

Drach got his first taste of bar and nightclub life as a preteen, when his grandfather would hand him an empty bucket that John would carry to a local pub, have the bartender fill it with beer and return it to his elder.

He played football at Memorial High School in West New York, N.J., and later at Rhode Island University.

Drach left college to serve in the Korean War. During a battle to take bloody Pork Chop Hill he was sent back to get more ammunition. When he returned, Drach found his outfit had been decimated.

He was given a battlefield promotion but eventually lost his stripes because, by his own admission, he was far from a model soldier, Bignotti said.

In the early 1950s, as a walk-on at the New York Giants football training camp, Drach made the team and suited up for games for two months during one season. He never played a down and eventually was cut from the squad.

Drach worked as a truck driver for Automobile Transport Inc., from 1954 to 1978, and did the same job for Waldbrum's Supermarket from 1978 until his retirement in 1987.

Drach, who long dreamed of owning horses and living in the wide open spaces of the West, moved to Las Vegas in 1988 and four years later bought a ranch in Overton, where he lived for five years. Last year, he and his fiancee opened John and Kay's Palo Verde Horse Ranch in Logandale.

He was diagnosed with colon cancer in December 1997 and underwent surgery that month. A year later doctors declared him cancer free.

Drach, tall and muscular, enjoyed riding horses, sailboating and hiking.

He is survived by three daughters, Jaclyn Brown and Kathleen Smith, both of Middletown, N.Y., and Karen Alexandropoulos of Milford, N.J.; eight grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. He was preceded in death by a teenage son, Scott Drach.

The family suggests donations can be made in Drach's memory to Opportunity Village Arc, 6300 W. Oakey Blvd., Las Vegas.