L.A.’s fourth bishop, Robert C. Rusack, was enthroned in 1974 having served the diocese for a decade as bishop suffragan, elected to this office while rector of St. Augustine by-the-Sea, Santa Monica, residing in Pacific Palisades with his wife, Janice, and their daughter and son. Born in 1926 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Bishop Rusack began ordained ministry as a rural priest in Deer Lodge, Montana, after his studies at New York’s General Theological Seminary which he later served as chairman of its board of trustees. Major developments shaping the church during his tenure as diocesan included women’s ordination, prayer book revision, and the arrival in Southern California of numerous Southeast Asian refugees. A majority of members of four Southland parishes — opposing women priests and the 1979 Book of Common Prayer – voted to leave the denomination, sparking lawsuits in which the courts returned two churches to the diocese but awarded properties to the two other parishes. While not initially in favor of the ordination of the Philadelphia 11, Bishop Rusack later reversed his position and ordained Victoria Hatch as the diocese’s first woman priest in 1977. Active in the life of the Anglican Communion, Bishop Rusack attended the 1978 Lambeth Conference and later welcomed Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie to Los Angeles for the Episcopal Church’s 1985 General Convention in Anaheim. Earlier that year the diocese elected its canon to the ordinary, Oliver B. Garver Jr., as suffragan who went on to lead the diocese for nearly two years after Bishop Rusack died in office in 1986 at age 60. His ashes are interred at St. Matthew’s Church, Pacific Palisades, and in 2021 his family dedicated a Catalina Island chapel built in his memory.
