Oliver Garver, Retired Church Official, Dies

The Right Rev. Oliver Bailey Garver Jr., retired suffragan (assistant) bishop of the six-county Episcopal diocese of Los Angeles, died late Friday at his Westwood home of cancer. He was 71.

Garver, a native of Los Angeles, was known for his embrace of social causes from civil rights for African Americans to providing havens for refugees from Asia and Central America.

He marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala., in 1965, denounced “Gestapo-style arrests” of Mexican American activists in Los Angeles in 1968 and helped craft the church response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

“I have never known a priest or bishop who gave his time and energy so wholeheartedly to the work of the church and wider community,” said Bishop Frederick H. Borsch, head of the 85,000-member Los Angeles diocese.

Garver led the diocese as acting bishop from July 1986 through June 1988, after the death of Bishop Robert C. Rusack and before Borsch’s installation in 1990.

Garver’s colorful career included duty in the South Pacific as a Navy officer and a 10-year-stint at the Lockheed Aircraft Corp. A graduate of Los Angeles High School and UCLA, Garver was sponsored for ordination in 1963 by St. Alban’s Church in Westwood, where he served as a priest.

He moved in 1966 to the Parish of East Los Angeles, based at historic Epiphany Church in Lincoln Heights. The Chicano movement newspaper La Raza was first published from basement offices on the site. Cesar Chavez and his United Farm Workers gained strong support from Epiphany parishioners and clergy.

Calling community organizing the key to advancing civil rights and economic development, Garver also became a supporter of the United Neighborhoods Organization, an activist group established in 1976 on the Eastside.

In 1988, as acting bishop, Garver and other religious leaders denounced the U.S. Border Patrol for entering a Catholic church in Orange to seize illegal immigrants.

A strong advocate for people with HIV and AIDS, Garver was a key leader in establishing in 1985 the Bishop’s Commission on AIDS Ministries, which continues today in support of building affordable housing for people with the disease.

After retiring from a 30-year career, Garver in 1990 became chaplain and bishop-in-residence at the Episcopal-affiliated Harvard-Westlake School.

He is survived by his mother and brother, Ronald.

Borsch is scheduled to preside at memorial services Aug. 10 at Harvard-Westlake, 3700 Coldwater Canyon Ave., North Hollywood. Interment will be private.