PASSINGS: Ernest D. Sillers, Dee Anthony, Luanne Pfeifer

Ernest D. Sillers

Founder of Episcopal schools

The Rev. Canon Ernest D. Sillers, 99, who founded several Episcopal schools and St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in San Juan Capistrano, died of natural causes Oct. 15 at Saddleback Memorial Hospital in Laguna Hills, St. Margaret’s officials said.

Sillers founded schools at St. Mark’s in Downey in 1960, St. Margaret’s in San Juan Capistrano in 1979, St. John’s in Rancho Santa Margarita in 1988 and St. Mary and All Angels in Aliso Viejo in 1994.

“He is the Father Junipero Serra of schools,” St. Margaret’s then-headmaster, Mark Campaigne, told The Times in 2001.

Ernest Dwyer Sillers was born Oct. 2, 1910, in River John, Nova Scotia. He graduated with a degree in theology from Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., and a master’s degree in philosophy from the University of New Hampshire.

He moved to California in 1956, serving at St. Bartholomew’s church in Pico Rivera. He obtained a teaching credential and worked part time as a substitute teacher.

In 1975, Sillers was retired and living in Laguna Beach with his wife, Aldine, when the bishop of the Los Angeles Diocese asked him to temporarily conduct services in San Juan Capistrano for parishioners meeting in their homes. Services were held in a local school until St. Margaret’s opened in 1979.

Dee Anthony, who began a 40-year music-managing career representing neighborhood friend Jerry Vale in the 1950s and later worked for Tony Bennett, Peter Frampton, Devo and other popular artists, died Sunday of pneumonia at a hospital in Norwalk, Conn., family spokesman Jay Strell said. He was 83.

Luanne Pfeifer, a journalist who covered skiing and other winter sports for The Times and Ski magazine in the 1960s and ‘70s and wrote “Ski California,” a comprehensive 1980 guide to the state’s ski areas, died of renal failure Oct. 14 at a hospice in San Diego, her family said. She was 80.

-- times staff and wire reports news.obits@latimes.com