About Sam

“In July 1776, Thomas Jefferson claimed the pursuit of happiness as a basic human right. This might well have been the last time that happiness was officially proposed as a national objective. And our sense of happiness is created not by the abundance of things we possess, but also by a sense of community and purpose. It’s about families, time for leisure. It’s about living a less complicated life, caring for the environment and the ecological stability of the Chesapeake Bay.”

--Sam Shropshire

Sam Shropshire has been active in our community since he first moved to Annapolis in 1987. He has shown wisdom in dealing with all sorts of social issues including poverty, AIDS, and crime. Sam served as a founding member on the Maryland State AIDS Commission and worked feverishly to see that the marginalized and dispossessed among us were given the support and training they needed to have a better quality of life. He has been active in local politics, and has shown great business acuity in promoting maritime business and helping raise support for local nonprofit organizations.

Sam's interests include boating, concern for the environment, and caring about the needs of the elderly and area youth. But interesting as that is, Sam’s story didn’t begin in Annapolis. It began in the deep South.

Sam Shropshire, 57, was born in Charleston, South Carolina. His father, Lucius Shropshire—a military pilot—died in a plane crash when Sam was just three months old. Three years later, his mother, Myrtice Satterfield Shropshire, returned with her four children to her hometown in north Georgia, where Sam grew up in a pretty strict Baptist upbringing. Later, in 1966, he graduated from the Christian prep school, Bob Jones Academy, in Greenville, South Carolina. He continued his education at Shelton College, a small Presbyterian liberal arts college in Cape May, New Jersey, graduating in 1971 with a B.A. degree in education. He did graduate work at Faith Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and California Graduate School of Theology in Glendale, California. Sam studied Russian language at the University of Central Florida and later, Asian culture and political science at National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan.

During his college years, Sam—by then a convinced Presbyterian—began traveling every summer to work in France with the Evangelical Reformed Church. His first summer in France he heard about the difficulties faced by believers behind the Iron Curtain, and at the end of each summer in Europe he began venturing farther and farther eastward in a quest to help persecuted Christians and Jews in East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, eventually ending up in jail in the Soviet Union. Yes, at the age of 21 he got arrested for smuggling "subversive contraband,” 10 Russian language Bibles and a couple of Jewish prayer books.

Sam's interest in helping persecuted Christians and Jews continued while in graduate school. “I was moved by the faith of men and women who were forced into the gulags of the Soviet Union or tortured and imprisoned many years simply because of their belief in God,” he says. “Such incredible faith commanded my respect. I had to do something to help them.”

In 1977 he was later married to a school teacher, Jana Luptáková, of Poprad, Czechoslovakia. After Jana immigrated to the United States in 1978, the couple moved to Pasadena, California, where Sam served as executive editor of East/West News Service—a well respected network of foreign correspondents reporting on religious persecution around the world. His daughter, Jana Gabriela, whom he proudly claims is a “gift from God,” was born in nearby Glendale in 1981.

In 1983 Sam was hired by the Zurich, Switzerland-based Christian Solidarity International (CSI) to establish an office in Washington, D.C. As the US executive director of CSI he sought to effect changes in State Department policies toward repressive nations. He lobbied members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He organized international fact-finding trips for US senators, congressmen and members of the British and Canadian Parliaments. He traveled abroad with these officials to visit with the families of persecuted believers and to intervene on their behalf with government leaders in Romania, Nepal, China and the Soviet Union.

In 1987, concerned about the inaction of many Christians in dealing compassionately with the AIDS epidemic, Sam founded Love & Action, a North American faith-based nonprofit agency. He helped develop volunteer training programs for Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christians, and encouraged ecumenical social services for thousands of men, women, and children who were living with HIV/AIDS. Eventually more than 4,000 volunteers throughout the United States and Canada were given instruction in inpatient and outpatient care. He wrote preventive AIDS education programs for youth, and hundreds of US and Canadian churches became Love & Action community centers for compassionate AIDS relief and prevention. As president of the organization, Sam was soon in demand as an international spokesperson for families and individuals impacted by the epidemic, speaking in motivational seminars and conferences throughout North America, Europe and the Caribbean.

After the fall of communism in 1989, Sam founded Project Friendship, a grass-roots Annapolis initiative to help the citizens of Eastern and Central Europe make the difficult transition from socialism to a free market economy. Project Friendship—supported by members of the Annapolis Rotary Club—providedand more than 150 Russian, Lithuania, Latvian, Slovak and Czech families and individuals with counsel and assistance in setting up small businesses. Project Friendship helped promote environmental programs for cleaning up the Volga River in Russia and assisted with immigration, helping one Uzbek family achieve political asylum and resettlement in the United States. The program likewise sponsored Eastern European students for employment in NASA and helped bring individuals to the United States to further their education in business and medicine.

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Sam with Mayor Vladimir Zhukov and members of the Togliatti, Russia city administration dedicating the Togliatti-Annapolis friendship bell. Two friendship bells are in the city council chambers of both cities and are rung to open city council meetings in both cities.

But perhaps Sam’s most noted accomplishment was helping to foment a political revolution! On October 24, 1997, Josh Cohen of Ward 8 and Sam Shropshire, after hearing of the planned state closure of the Eastport Bridge, penned on a Rams Head Tavern napkin the historic declaration of independence of the Maritime Republic of Eastport. A real revolution of sorts insued, and Sam was duly sworn in as the tiny republic's first premier, presiding over the MRE's first Revolutionary Council! The following year, after a bet with then Annapolis Mayor Dean Johnson, Sam led the MRE in a second declaration of war on the Annapolis mainland, and the first International Tug of War was underway! The tug of war has turned into an annual event attracting national media attention, highlighting the importance of local maritime businesses and raising more than $165,000 for area charities thus far.

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Sam is known affectionately in Annapolis as the Founding Father of the Maritime Republic of Eastport--a community organization that promotes Annapolis maritime businesses and helps raise money for nonprofits through the annual "International Tug-of-War between the MRE and USA."		 -
Left: Mayor Dean Johnson, Sam Shropshire, Josh Cohen and Mike Miron meet in the middle of the Eastport Bridge to agree to one more year of peace between the MRE and Annapolis! Right: Sam, Josh Cohen and then "Alderman" Ellen Moyer presented the MRE colors to the excutive officer of the nuclear submarine USS Annapolis. (They officially renamed the sub "MRES Eastport"!)

This past June Sam Shropshire was appointed executive director of The Simplicity Forum, a national network of academia seeking to meet the challenges of over-consumption and overwork. “The stress on individuals and families resulting from consumerism and overwork,” he says, “is epidemic.” Sam points out that the “American Dream of owning a home and raising a family is today well nigh unaffordable.” Over-consumption and overwork, he says, are leading more and more toward “bankruptcies, mental depression, broken marriages, fragmented families, ruined lives and an increasingly destitute environment.” He points to the impact of over-consumption on the Chesapeake Bay.

On November 8, 2005, Sam Shropshire, a 10-year resident of Ward 7, was elected Alderman of Ward 7 on the Annapolis City Council. He says, "It’s not about being a Republican or a Democrat. It’s about caring for the men, women and children living in our community, and it's about giving Ward 7 the best possible representation on the City Council." Sam says, "Smart economic growth and development, improved traffic, lower crime rates, concern for the Chesapeake Bay, care for our senior citizens, low taxes, good streets—these are our issues."