Consecrated in 1948 to serve the diocese as its third bishop, F. Eric Bloy, born in Birchington, Kent, England in 1904, was then dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, having served previously as rector of St. James by-the-Sea, La Jolla, where his father also had been priest. Amid Southern California’s post-war building boom, the diocese grew to 188 congregations during Bishop Bloy’s 25-year episcopate, and he oversaw construction of some 45 church campuses. Bishop Bloy, for whom the diocese’s eponymous theological school is named, was student of Eastern religions and an amateur astronomer with a domed telescope at the La Cañada Flintridge home he shared with his wife, Frances. As the civil rights movement gained momentum locally and nationally, Bishop Bloy played leadership roles in mobilizing response to the 1965 Watts riots, and in forming the Parish of East Los Angeles, based at Church of the Epiphany, Lincoln Heights, in solidarity with the Chicano movement and formation of the United Farmworkers union. Before his retirement in 1973, Bishop Bloy was assisted at various times by Bishop Gooden and two other bishops suffragan, Donald J. Campbell and Ivol I. Curtis. Bishop Bloy retired in 1973. He died in 1993 at age 88 and is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills.
