Mrs. Siegel was not alone in her feelings. Several bare spots in the long highway of praise for Mr. Vera were papered over to spare embarrassment for the honoree. The City Council’s intramural feuds are authentic, dear reader. Pals in secret, they aren’t. Their raw words for each other have scratched raw wounds that are slow to heal at this age. After one early-meeting presentation to Mr. Vera, when the entire Council stepped out in front of the dais, each Council member was offered a chance to utter a little flowery folderol about the Mayor. As the hand mike was passed down the line, each member mutely, almost awkwardly, declined. After returning to their seats, Council members were invited again to send up a bouquet, even a brief one. Most of them met minimal standards. The faint responses were not lost on Mr. Vera. “At least they said nice things,” he said later, with a whiff of irony.
And the Uncontested Winner Is…
My choice for etching the most sincere, the most eloquently articulated love letter was another important name in our community, Jim Boulgarides, Jr., a City Councilman in El Segundo. Showing how well his parents raised him and the authentic respect he has for the former Mayor, Mr. Boulgarides insistently addressed Mr. Vera, the father of a school chum, as “Sir.” You know how parents of your classmates became Fred and Frieda instead of Mr. and Mrs. as you grew older? Happily, not with Mr. Boulgarides. It is my intention to contact Mr. Boulgarides’ wife in the coming days to discuss a foolproof nutrition strategy for her valuable husband. I plan to work hard to keep the gentleman safely healthy for a number of years. Monday night convinced me he will deliver the main, perhaps only, address at my funeral. He can start composing it any day because who knows? If his oratory at my funeral approaches his rose-festooned tribute to Mr. Vera, the Ari Noonan Mourning and Chowder Society will be shocked to learn what a terrific fellow I was.
Turning to one of my pet points about public life, plenty of overstuffed politicians impersonally sent along their overheated, debatably sincere, greetings to the Mayor on the occasion of his retirement. Their wooden messages were, of course, bologna, mechanical fairy tales, fireproof but not foolproof puffery that Sharon Zeitlin and her Friends of the Library should relate to innocent little children at the Julian Dixon Library on Tuesday nights. You know the names — Dianne, Diane, Yvonne, Kevin, Karen. They love Albert, they all testified, and they regret he is turning out his lights. But they were way too busy to show up for his retirement. He wasn’t that important. Something about all of them washing their cars on the same night. In the dark, I guess.
A Singular Siegel Moment
Besides those chubby-cheeked cherubs who were floating across the ceiling of Council Chambers strumming their heavenly harps, there was a lady in the room who lives with stronger feelings toward Mr. Vera than many who cheered him. The beauty of being Adele Siegel and of being ninety years old is that you can say what all others would not dare to breathe. “I was upset by all of the accolades for Vera,” said Mrs. Siegel, who has tangled with him from early in his first term in the early 1990s. “So much repetition, everybody saying the same thing about him. I don’t think he deserved those words at all because of the shenanigans he has pulled over the years. Many people talked about all of the free food he distributed. You know why he did it? So people would vote for him. He sent flowers to schools so parents would vote for him. I am very annoyed the way it was handled.”
