The Slate of Vestry Candidates for 2025
Edward Appiah
I am Edward Appiah and my family and I reside in Odenton. I did have my formative years in Ghana, West Africa. I moved to the United States in 2001 for further studies and worshipped at another Episcopal Church for a while. I started attending St. Paul's a little over a year ago after a desire to visit for years. I do enjoy the mass with the 1928 missal and I have continued to attend St. Paul's since my first visit. I work in IT and coach soccer in my spare time. My wife Elsie, Abigail (11) and Andrew (8) have enjoyed the fellowship with the St. Paul's community and I would be honored to serve on the Vestry
Jim McDonough
Jim McDonough is a graduate of the United States Military Academy and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served a full career as a United States Army officer. During his active military service, he held a number key assignments, to include command at every level from platoon (a rifle platoon in combat in Vietnam with the 173rd Airborne Brigade) through company, battalion, and brigade. He served abroad in Vietnam, Korea, Germany, Belgium, and Italy, in addition to living in Iran, Syria, and Italy as a child as the son of a U.S. Army sergeant stationed abroad. He concluded his career in command of the Southern European Task Force (SETAF) Infantry Airborne Brigade (later flagged as the 173rd Airborne Brigade) with operational deployments to Africa (Rwanda/Zaire/Uganda) and the Balkans and crisis contingency missions in Eastern Europe, parts of the Middle East, and most of Africa. In addition to his troop assignments, he taught political science and foreign affairs at West Point, served as the executive officer to the Army’s Chief of Intelligence in Europe (LTG Jim Williams), military assistant to the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (General John Galvin), the Director of the School of Advanced Military Studies and, at the direction of the Chief of Staff of the Army (General Gordon Sullivan), as head of the team and the principal writer of the U.S. Army’s warfighting doctrine (Field Manual 100-5: Operations), the Army’s central doctrinal document. His military decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal, the Bronze Star for valor, two additional awards of the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, Senior Parachutist wings, and the Ranger Tab.
He retired after 27 years in uniform (as a colonel) and immediately thereafter went to the White House staff where he served from 1996 to 1999 as Director of Strategy for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the agency that leads the nation’s efforts to reduce drug abuse and its consequences on the American people. He was a key player in the conceptualization, planning, and execution of national drug policies to reduce the demand for and cut the supply of illegal drugs in America.
From 1999 to 2006, he was the Director of the Florida Office of Drug Control for Governor Jeb Bush. Over a period of seven years, the rates of youth use of illegal substances decreased significantly, treatment of the addicted was expanded, and interdiction and counter smuggling efforts increased. During that same time, he was also the state official charged to bring down the Florida suicide rate since there is a strong nexus between suicide, substance abuse, and mental illness. Over a period of five years the rate of suicide decreased from approximately 13 per 100,000 to 9 per 100,000.
Amid a crisis of corruption in the Florida prison system in 2006, he was appointed (overnight) by Bush as the Secretary of Corrections, overseeing an agency with a cadre of 28,000, a prison population of 90,000, a parole and probation offender population of 160,000, and a budget of $2.5 billion. Focusing first on corruption (the preceding Secretary was sentenced to eight years in federal prison, his deputy to 3 years), he systematically went through the over 160 prisons, work camps, and related facilities rooting out the rot and replacing it with better people and appropriate systems to ensure operating efficiencies, a high degree of human decency, and a high standard of ethics. Reappointed to the job by the succeeding Governor (Charlie Crist) he competed his reform efforts and retired from the position in 2008.
Jim McDonough remains active in supporting national security and other public causes. In 1997 he served as editor-in-chief of the Report of the National Defense Panel, a Senate commissioned effort to set a strategy for the first 25 years of the 21st century. In 2005 he served as editor of the Report of the Overseas Basing Commission, a Congressional appointed effort to review the global basing system to ensure America’s global military commitments and contingencies. Both these reports were adopted in whole or in part by subsequent administrations.
He was the senior fellow of the JEHT Foundation (JEHT stands for justice, equality, human dignity, and tolerance). From February to June of 2008 he served by appointment of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal as the transformation team leader to address serious problems concerning mental illness, drug addiction, and developmental disabilities among the population of New Orleans and its surrounding three parishes that had persisted and worsened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He was the Chairman of the Florida Parole Qualifications Committee, served as a Guardian Ad Litem, and represented the 2nd Judicial Circuit for the Florida Association of Drug Court Professionals. He is currently working on two books -- one on his reform efforts within the Florida Department of Corrections and one on the Rwanda genocide of 1994.
He is the author of many professional articles and has published three books; Platoon Leader (also a movie), The Defense of Hill 781, and The Limits of Gloryand holds several awards from both his civilian and military experiences. He was the boxing champion in the welterweight class at West Point in his junior and senior years and received the Academy’s award as its best all-around boxer in its graduating class of 1969.
Susan Schulte
My husband John and I have been members of St Paul’s for 15 years and attend the 8:00am service. I serve on both the altar guild and the ladies guild. In the past, I served on the Strategic Planning committee. I try very hard to live by and be an example of the Christian values I have learned. It would be an honor to work with the Clergy and Vestry of St Paul’s.
I have done many things in my life. Worked in banking, managed and worked our horse farm in South County. I was president and managed our online prosthetic and orthotic educational bookstore. I was an EMT and certified fire fighter, and then, president of the Ladies Auxiliary, president the ladies golf league in our community and am now chair of the golf committee for our community.
John and I have been married for 52 years, have three children, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.