Emily Stevens Hall; Among First Episcopal Women Priests

Emily Stevens Hall, 74, the third woman ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. Mrs. Hall, the daughter of the late Bishop W. Bertrand Stevens, in 1978 became the first woman to graduate from the Episcopal Theological School in Claremont. After her ordination in 1979, she served as assistant minister at St. Andrew’s in Ojai until 1986, then served as pastor and counselor to the clergy of the diocese and director of the Center for Christian Spirituality-West. She served as president of an oversight committee that temporarily managed the diocese after the death of Bishop Robert C. Rusack in July, 1986. A graduate of the Episcopal Bishops School for girls in La Jolla and of Mills College, where she was student body president, Mrs. Hall helped her husband, petroleum geologist Kempton Bishop Hall, operate an apricot orchard in the Ojai Valley for 40 years. On Saturday in Santa Paula of cancer.