Fourth in a series

Re “Vice Mayor Small Is Going Home – Sort of”

When Vice Mayor Thomas Small lived in Sicily and Italy in the early 1980s, he did what a curious 19-year-old college student is expected to do when he takes a year off from classes.

He roamed and explored.

“Once I lived on a farm, and after that I lived in Florence and I live in Rome,” Mr. Small said.

In the morning, the vice mayor, his wife Joanna and their 9-year-old twins will become the first members of the Culver City delegation to fly off toward Capo d’Orlando, Sicily, which soon will become Culver City’s newest Sister City.

They will be joined next week in the seaside Sicilian city for 11 days of Sister City business by new Mayor Jeff Cooper and his predecessor Jim Clarke.

Vice Mayor Small said that on his groundbreaking first trip to Italy and Sicily as a college student, that was when he determined his professional future was in architecture.

“This was where I first fell in love with cities,” he said, “with the life of cities with architecture and with art.”

What were the magnets for the young intellectual?

“In those Italian cities like Rome and Florence,” he now he was speaking slowly, emphasizing each separate syllable, “it was the richness of  the texture of life at every moment of every day.”

Artfully, sensitively, gently, firmly, Mr. Small expertly massaged both terms.

“Every moment of the day in Italian cities is filled with things that are joyful, with things that are beautiful, with things that are delicious.”

(To be continued)