Alexius O. Bishop, was state administrator
Alexius Owen “Lex” Bishop, a retired state administrator and decorated Vietnam War veteran, died Tuesday from colon cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson.
The North Roland Park resident was 77.
He was born in Baltimore and raised on Murray Hill Road in Ruxton, the son of John Owen Bishop, a general contractor, and his wife, Margaret Dyer Bishop, a homemaker.
Mr. Bishop attended the old Mount Washington Country School and graduated in 1959 from Loyola Blakefield.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1963 in economics from what is now Loyola University Maryland, Mr. Bishop enlisted in the Army.
He was a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces and served with airborne units and the Signal Corps. He completed tours in Korea, Okinawa and Thailand, and was stationed in Vietnam from 1967 to 1969.
He was discharged in 1970 with decorations that included a Bronze Star. After completing active duty, he served with the Maryland National Guard and was an Army Reserve officer, attaining the rank of colonel.
Mr. Bishop, who was known as “Lex,” received a master’s degree in business in 1973 from Loyola.
During his 30-year career with state government, he was an administrator with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Department of Budget and Fiscal Planning and the Department of Public Safety. He retired in 2002.
A 47-year resident of the city’s Poplar Hill neighborhood, Mr. Bishop was a student of military history and enjoyed reading, dancing and singing.
He was an inveterate bridge player and a member of a luncheon group of friends who called themselves ROMEO, an acronym for Retired Old Men Eating Out.
Mr. Bishop was a communicant of the Roman Catholic Shrine of the Sacred Heart, 1701 Regent Road, Mount Washington, where a funeral Mass will be offered at 10:30 a.m. today.
He is survived by his wife of 47 years, the former Ellie Goff, a retired social worker; two daughters, Megan Alexis Bishop of Lutherville and Melissa Elizabeth Bishop Newbury of Canton, Ga.; two sisters, Barbara Ann Wilson of Ruxton and Brendy Melinda Esmond of Naples, Fla.; three grandchildren; and several nieces and nephews. A son, Lucas Alexius Bishop, died in 1976. tion for incarceration was not really a military necessity but outright racism,” said San Francisco attorney Dale Minami, who used it as evidence in getting wartime convictions vacated for those who refused to report to relocation camps.
Born Aug. 5, 1924, in Sacramento to Japanese immigrant parents, Aiko Yoshinaga moved with her family to Los Angeles as a child. She was 17 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Soon after, she learned she and 14 other Japanese-American students at her school would not graduate with their class.
“You don't deserve to get your high school diplomas because your people bombed Pearl Harbor,” she recalled her school's principal telling them.
Forty-seven years later they would receive those diplomas, at a special ceremony held at Southern California's Santa Anita racetrack, where numerous JapaneseAmerican families had been housed in horse stables before being shipped to relocation camps.