Sturgis Riddle; Dean Emeritus At Episcopal Cathedral in Paris
Hyfler/Rosner
December 14, 2003, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
HEADLINE: Sturgis Riddle, 94, Dean Emeritus At Episcopal Cathedral in Paris
BYLINE: By WOLFGANG SAXON
The Very Rev. Sturgis Lee Riddle, dean emeritus of the American Episcopal
Cathedral in Paris, died on Tuesday at his home on the Upper East Side of
Manhattan. He was 94.
His death was reported on the cathedral's Web site.
A funeral service was held for Dean Riddle on Friday morning at St. Thomas
Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue, where he was an assistant minister from
1940 to 1946.
He was elected in 1949 to head the congregation in Paris, formally the
American Episcopal Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, regarded as the mother
church of the Convocation of American Churches in Europe. He retired in 1974
and returned to New York. He also founded Friends of the American Cathedral,
which has chapters in New York and Washington. Until 1984 he was an honorary
minister at St. Bartholomew's Church on Park Avenue.
Sturgis Riddle was born in Stephenville, Tex. He grew up in California and
graduated from Stanford University in 1931. He studied at the General
Theological Seminary in New York and received his divinity degree at the
Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Mass., in 1934, when he was
ordained a deacon.
He was chaplain at the University of California at Berkeley and lectured at
the Church Divinity School of the Pacific until 1937. Before being assigned
to St. Thomas Church, he was rector at the Caroline Church of Brookhaven in
Setauket, N.Y.
In 1947, the presiding bishop of the Episcopalian Church appointed him
rector of St. James American Church in Florence, Italy, which he reopened
after a wartime lockdown.
Dean Riddle is survived by his wife of 64 years, Elisabeth Pope Sloan
Riddle, and two brothers, Joseph C., of Long Beach, Calif., and Roger A., of
Oklahoma City.