Richard (“Dicky” as he was known by most of his friends) was the son of Dorothy Weiland and Fred Weiland. Born August 31, 1929, he passed away at 93 years of age on January 19, 2023 in his beloved Cincinnati. He was the step-son of the late Ruth Weiland, beloved husband of the late Marcia Pastor Weiland, dear father of David (Gini Brown) Weiland, Jeanne (Jay Moskovitz) Weiland, and Fred (Sandra Spinelli) Weiland, loving grandfather of Sarah, Jonathan, Gabriel, Olivia, Seth, and Matthew, caring brother of Lois (Gary) Marcus and the late Janet W. Solinger, Mickey Klein, and Sally White.
Dicky grew up in North Avondale, a suburb of Cincinnati, with his sisters, Janet, Dorothy and Mickey. Family members lived close by in the close knit community, including his Uncle Lou Weiland, an attorney and writer of a weekly column in the local Jewish newspaper, “The American Israelite.”
He attended Walnut Hills High School, the college preparatory high school in Cincinnati, followed by Williams College. He then attended law school, following in the footsteps of his father, a well known and very successful attorney. Dicky did not enjoy the practice of law, but liked real estate development. He partnered with other Cincinnatians like Bruce Bardach and David Reichert to buy and sell various properties. His father had also built a practice of obtaining reductions in tax values of real estate and Dicky worked in that arena as well as other consulting roles, forming Richard Consulting. Through this entity, Dicky consulted in many arenas, but he worked most often in politics on the local, state and national fronts. Dicky was heavily involved with the Democratic Party but his work knew no such bounds. Although he worked with and entertained many, many politicians, including spending time with the Kennedy family in Hyannisport, he also served on an incredible number of boards, raising money and helping guide their decisions. He worked to obtain public and private funding for those organizations including only by way of example, Talbert House, Halom House, Hebrew University College, the Anti Defamation League, The Holocaust and Humanities Center in Cincinnati, the Jewish Community Relations Council and many, many more. Dick often traveled to Columbus, taken by driver so he could focus on his multiple cell phones and the never ending calls he received from people asking for his help. Dick was an incredible force of nature-he knew everyone and everyone knew him. His typical evening consisted of attending multiple events-whether it was political fundraisers or social events, Dicky worked nonstop.
Dick lost his wife, Marcia, in 2003 at age 70 after she suffered from a debilitating disease left her wheelchair bound for many years. She loved her children, David, Jeanie and Fred, ferociously and was a great influence on their lives.
Dick loved tennis as did David and Fred. In fact, Fred went on to become a tennis pro until the collapse of his deck at home caused injuries of such a magnitude that he could no longer function as a pro. Fred has gone on to become a coach and is involved in numerous charitable activities.
According to an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer,
“Weiland also was an activist and heavily involved in the civil rights movement. He walked in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, worked to end civil unrest following Cincinnati’s 1967 riots and gave a $500,000 endowment to the Cincinnati State Community and Technical College in memory of civil rights leader Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.
Weiland guided millions of dollars in state funding toward Cincinnati’s Jewish community and established an endowment through the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati to combat antisemitism.
He also raised and donated millions of dollars for various causes that he cared about, including the Cincinnati Reds Community Fund, Talbert House, a halfway house for those emerging from incarceration, and Halom House Inc., an independent living facility for adults with disabilities which Weiland helped establish.
Even in his later years, Weiland served on more than 30 boards and commissions.
Perhaps one of the most formative times in Weiland’s life was also his lowest. He spent less than a year in federal prison after he admitted to illegally submitting a request for more than $9,000 to the Federal Housing Administration.
At the time, Weiland claimed the money was expenses his company, Avon Builders Inc., incurred on a federally financed project in Avondale and that no other companies were owed money in relation to the project, according to a 1976 Enquirer article.
However, a subcontractor was owed that same amount at the time, the article states. Weiland gave up his law license as a result of his conviction.
“When he came out, he just changed his life and he devoted himself to making the world a better place, in his own way,” said Jim Friedman with the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati.
“It changes your life, or something’s wrong with you,” Weiland said of his time in prison in a 2002 Cincinnati Magazine article. “When you are told you are going to leave your family and your home and you don’t know if you are going to return to your city or have a job…the worst part is just not knowing what the future will be.”
Per an article in The American Israelite,
“Richard Weiland passed away January 19, at age 93, leaving behind his loving family and a legacy of activism and social justice.
Dick was born and raised in the Avondale neighborhood of Cincinnati in the heart of the Jewish community. His family was of Russian and Polish descent. “We were a very closely knit family, we had all our holidays together,” said Dick. In the first grade, he asked his parents to have his name legally changed from Alan Richard to Richard Alan because there were three other Alans in his class. He went on to Walnut Hills High School where he was on the varsity basketball and tennis teams and made a lifelong friend, the tennis immortal Tony Trabert. He also became the first Jew of Eastern European extraction to not only join but lead his fraternity, which had previously included only German Jews.
Dick first met his late wife Marcia when she was in the seventh grade and later proposed to her when she was a counselor at Camp Livingston. They raised three children: David, Jeanne, and Fred. Dick and Marcia loved to dance and were the life of any party they were part of.
Dick’s sense of justice, and willingness to fight for it, established itself early. He attended Williams College in Massachusetts and was soon leading change there. After being required to attend non-Jewish services, Dick asked the dean if he could lead Jewish services, and he became an “unofficial rabbi” on Friday nights for as many as one hundred and fifty Jewish and non-Jewish students.”
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