Ronald Haines; Bishop of Episcopal Diocese

Ronald Hayward Haines was born Aug. 14, 1934, in Wilmington, Del., and grew up in New Castle, Del. At the University of Delaware, he was a varsity lacrosse player and intramural light-heavyweight boxing champion.

He received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1956 and began his career as an engineer with the old Reynolds Metals Co. in Richmond. He joined a metals engineering firm in New York in 1962 and grew interested in ministry when his wife had a serious illness.

He graduated in 1965 from the George Mercer Jr. Memorial School of Theology in New York and, in 1967 received a master of divinity degree from the city's General Theological Seminary. He obtained a master's degree in sacred theology from the seminary in 1978.

Ordained in 1967, Bishop Haines served in two churches in New York before moving to Rutherfordton, N.C., where he ministered to black and white congregations. In 1981, he was named deputy to the bishop of the Diocese of Western North Carolina and developed a reputation as an excellent administrator.

Five years later, he was elected suffragan bishop, or second in command of the Washington diocese, which includes the District and four counties in Maryland. In his "vision statement" for the diocese, Bishop Haines declared that his goal was to build a community "where all are accepted and none are despised."

Bishop Haines helped put the diocese on sound financial footing and supervised the affairs of the National Cathedral and its three schools. He appeared in the pulpit with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu in South Africa and raised more than $1 million for hurricane relief in Central America.

In 1992, he named Jane Holmes Dixon suffragan bishop, the first woman to hold that title in the Washington diocese. After he retired in 2000, he moved to Pennsylvania and returned to parish ministry in Lancaster and Manheim, serving until shortly before his death.

In 1994, his son Jeffrey sued an Episcopal priest and other church leaders in North Carolina, saying he had been sexually molested for 12 years. The case was settled out of court.

In addition to his son Thomas Jeffrey Haines of Kittery Point, Maine, Bishop Haines's survivors include his wife of 51 years, Mary T. Haines of Lancaster; five other children, Jennifer Haines Tozier of Advance, N.C., Alicia Haines Pearson and Ronald Gregory Haines, both of Tacoma, Wash., Jonathan Andrew Haines of Portland, Ore., and Peter Joshua Haines of Rockville; 16 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.