Two gotchas:

1) NoClassDefError's: it's possible to have the wrong support-v4.jar file.  Need to get API version 13 or higher to have DrawerLayout.  Best result is to get the latest support-v4.jar from the latest SDK. 

2) setContentView in both the parent class and the inherited class causes issues triggering the drawer.  I removed it from the inherited class (where it was redundant) and then all of it sudden it started  working!