Robert E. L. Strider Sr.
Robert Edward Lee Strider was the third Bishop of West Virginia in the Episcopal Church in the United States.
Early life and education
The first native West Virginian to become Bishop of West Virginia, Strider was born in Leetown, Jefferson County, West Virginia and educated in the town's one-room schoolhouse. Classmates included future bishop of Tennessee Edmund P. Dandridge and future U.S. Army general John P. Lucas.Ministry
Rev. Strider was rector at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Wheeling, West Virginia when elected bishop coadjutor to Rt.Rev. William Loyall Gravatt in 1923. Although he had been handling diocesan affairs for several years, he formally succeeded Bishop Gravatt in 1939, and retired as announced after his 68th birthday in 1955. He lived most of his life at Rose Hill Farm in Kearneysville, West Virginia.During his episcopate, the diocese established the Peterkin Camp and Conference Center in Romney, West Virginia, which he consecrated in 1946. Since 1928, Christian youth groups had used the Jackson 4H camp, and appreciated a camp of their own. The diocese also received a significant bequest, Sandscrest Farms near Oglebay outside Wheeling, which was intended to become a retirement facility, but which became a conference center. The diocese also closed the Sheltering Arms hospital, which had ceased operations in 1924, after a plan to merge with Charleston General Hospital fell through, and a new highway was routed through the grounds, leading to years of appraisal litigation. More than 2500 people attended Bishop Strider's retirement ceremony.
His successor was William Camrock Campbell, who had begun administrative diocesan service before World War II.