Crusader Connection

Letter from Brooklandwood

Charley Mitchell '73

After our founding on February 9, 1849, at St. Paul’s Parish, St. Paul’s moved 10 blocks west in 1868 to 258 Saratoga St., the former home of the Maryland Asylum for the Blind, where the school remained for 10 years. In 1878, following several other locations (including a “Matron in Charge” in 1878), St. Paul’s took up residence at 8-10 East Franklin Street (the current home of renowned restaurant Tio Pepe’s), where we remained until moving to our Rogers Avenue Campus in 1923. Purchase price: $55,000.

Following 39 years on Rogers Avenue, in 1952 St. Paul’s acquired the Brooklandwood estate from the heirs of Isaac Emerson, a wealthy philanthropist who invented the headache remedy, Bromo Seltzer. The 1952-53 school year, the first on our current campus, featured students taking classes in stables that had been converted into classrooms. Purchase price: $135,000.

Recently discovered documents contain financial details of the move from Rogers Avenue to Brooklandwood. “I attach statement in the amount of $4.85, together with bill in the amount of $4.08, from the H.B. Davis Co. covering paint purchased in connection with the refurbishing of steel lockers for the School,” reads a letter from Inland Steel Products Co. to Mrs. M.E. Kressler, Asst. Treasurer, St. Paul’s School. In addition, Michael Richick was to be paid $1.66½ per hour for 35 hours of work on the lockers.  

On June 27, 1952, the president of W.F. Dougherty & Sons in Philadelphia (“Kitcheners Since 1852,” trumpeted their letterhead) wrote to the Rev. Harry Lee Doll, asking to bid on the school’s plans for a new kitchen. “We suggest that you avail yourselves of the services of our Engineers,” advised E.B. Dougherty. “They are adequately and specially trained in this work and can consequently render a service invaluable to one charged with the responsibility of designing a workable and desirable kitchen.” On February 27, 1953, came a letter from the Calvert Contracting Co. that quoted $385 for “grading a playground on the school property.” Statements in 1953 from Harry T. Campbell Sons’ Corp. total $4,572.35 “for Paving various work and walks at the school” ($2,835 of which was for “Main Road including Entrance”).

Most intriguing is a mortgage statement for March 1955 showing $399.61 due, with $206.25 of that sum as principal. Even knowing these figures and the purchase price of the property, calculating when the mortgage might have been paid off is difficult because we know neither the term nor the interest rate on the loan—though the minutes of the board’s finance committee should have those details for a future issue of this newsletter.

Voices from the Hill

Photo of Hunter Deeley '04

Hunter Deeley ’04 is an attorney advisor with the Foreign Investment Review Section in the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he assesses the national security implications of certain foreign acquisitions of U.S. companies. As an attorney in the Department's representative office for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), Hunter makes recommendations to senior leadership regarding these acquisitions, and drafts, negotiates, and monitors mitigation agreements between the Department and companies to address national security risks. He has also represented the Department on staff-level interagency policy coordinating committees at the National Security Council.

Recently, Hunter was one of 42 national security practitioners chosen to participate in the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ 2021 National Security Fellowship Program, a D.C.-based research institute focused on national security and foreign policy. The program brings together mid-career practitioners from the government, military and private sector to collaborate with each other and high-level experts in and out of government on national security and foreign policy issues.

In 2015, Hunter was selected to join the Attorney General’s Honors Program, the nation's premier entry-level federal attorney recruitment program that attracts candidates from hundreds of law schools across the country. Since that time, Hunter has received several Assistant Attorney General Awards for Excellence for significant contributions to the goals and mission of the National Security Division. Most recently, he was honored for his work on the development of regulations to implement the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018 and the second published penalty in the history of CFIUS. 

A graduate of the University of Virginia and the American University Washington College of Law, Hunter lives in Washington, D.C., with his husband, P.J. McGovern, an associate with Eagle Hill Consulting. Hunter’s father, Carey (a Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge) and brother Trip (a Director at Stiefel) are also St. Paul’s alumni (1969 and 2001, respectively); and his sister, Lindsay (an Account Supervisor at Ogilvy), attended the Lower School.

Hunter was selected as the St. Paul’s 2019 Distinguished Young Alumnus by the SP Alumni Association. Outside of work, Hunter enjoys exploring the various neighborhoods and restaurants of the nation’s capital with P.J. and traveling home to Baltimore to spend time with family.