Moment in Time (August 10, 2021)

Rev. Oliver C. Weist, pastor of First Community Church in Marble Cliff, is

dressed as a Keystone Cop for the tri-village Field Day celebration.

Between the years 1915 and 1925, the event of the year was the Grandview Heights, Marble Cliff, and Upper Arlington Field Day Celebration. This annual holiday activity was held in early summer and featured a parade, food, a baseball game between GH and UA, children's games, etc. It was the brainchild of the dynamic and progressive pastor of First Community Church, Oliver Clyde Weist, shown here dressed as a "Keystone Cop". The woman dressed in a Red Cross uniform was not in costume but was an actual member of the local chapter charged with making bandages during WW I. She is holding a sign that says "Field Day 1917".

In 1915 Weist was appointed the minister at the Grandview Congregational Church, bringing with him an idea that the best model for a church to serve the diverse backgrounds of the residents was a community, nondenominational church. (Fred Brownlee was the first minister of the Congregational Church, which was dedicated in 1911.) The Congregational membership voted to withdraw from the parent Congregational body and reestablish themselves as the nondenominational First Community Church.

Rev. Weist was a graduate of Ohio State University and of Union Theological Seminary and received his master's degree in sociology from Columbia University. He was ordained in 1912 to the ministry by the New York Presbytery. In World War I, he served with the YMCA at Camp Sherman. Weist was FCC pastor for 16 years and has been credited with not only changing the denomination of the church to a community church, but also recruiting 1,936 new members to the congregation. The tremendous growth in the congregation led to the building of a church on Cambridge Boulevard that was dedicated on June 3, 1926.

According to his obituary, after leaving FCC, Weist and his first wife Carolyn (Tabler) moved to New York and served parishes in West Center and Sherburne, N. Y. Mrs. Weist died in 1955. When his pastorate in Sherburne ended, Mr. Weist retired and returned to Columbus, where he married Evelyn (formerly Mrs. Charles) Silbernagle, who for 20 years was the minister of music at First Community Church.

Weist was often quoted as saying that he switched his first two given names, Oliver and Clyde, so that his initials would not spell C.O.W.