wfn.org | Bush's selections include at least three United Methodists

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

Jan. 16, 2001      News media contact: Joretta Purdue ·(202)
546-8722·Washington    10-21-33-71B{010}

WASHINGTON (UMNS) - At least three United Methodists are among those named
by President-elect George W. Bush, also a United Methodist, for important
posts in his administration. Two would fill Cabinet-level positions and the
other is his chief of staff.

Longtime friend Donald Louis Evans, 53, an oilman, has been nominated to
head the U.S. Department of Commerce. Evans, whose wife went to grade school
with Bush, was Bush's campaign chairman and is reported to be the
president-elect's closest adviser. 

Since the 1970s, Evans has served as president of Tom Brown Inc., an oil
company with an office in Midland, Texas. In addition, he has been elected
chairman of the University of Texas board of trustees twice.

Evans has been an active member of First United Methodist Church in Midland
since 1975, having served as chairman of the administrative board, the
finance committee, the staff-parish committee and the 1997 building
campaign. He and his wife, Susan Marinis Evans, take turns with the other
members of their Sunday school class in providing the lessons.

The Evanses have three children. Their two daughters are grown and live
elsewhere now, but they and the Evanses' son, a fifth-grader, all
participate in the life of the church.

Norman Yoshio Mineta, 69, a Democrat who was appointed secretary of the
Department of Commerce by President Clinton last July, has been nominated to
become secretary of the Department of Transportation in the Bush Cabinet. 

The first Asian American to serve in the Cabinet, Mineta was interred in a
detention camp with his family during World War II. As a congressman from
the Silicon Valley area of California, he served for more than 20 years on
the transportation committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. When not
involved in public office he has been a business executive.

Mineta and his wife, Danealia, maintain a home in San Jose, Calif., where
they are active in the Wesley United Methodist Church, a Japanese-American
congregation. They also have a home in the Washington area.

Andrew H. Card Jr. of Arlington, Va., has been named chief of staff. A
former secretary of transportation under Bush's father, Card is married to
Kathleene Marie Card, who is an associate pastor at Trinity United Methodist
Church in Arlington. She expects to become a probationary member of the
Virginia Annual (regional) Conference later this year.

Both Cards, who met in the fifth grade in Holbrook, Mass., became members of
Arlington Forest United Methodist Church in Arlington when they arrived in
the Washington area in 1983. He was raised in the Congregational Church, and
she was a Catholic before joining him in the Congregational Church. Andrew
Card continues to be a member of Arlington Forest and frequently attends
Sunday services there before going on to Trinity, where Kathleene Card
serves.

As Bush's chief of staff, Card will help select as many as 3,000 Bush
appointees in the next few months.

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United Methodist News Service
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