The sadness that naturally accompanies the mass departure of almost permanent fixtures on the School Board blended last night with the freshly unwrapped joy surrounding the arrival of three curious new members to create a soothing symphony of emotions for the hundreds of onlookers.
For a speedy, ritual-laden 80 minutes, Lin Howe School was partying as if it were New Year’s Eve.
The same mixture of deep, grippingly held feelings flowed like the bubbly.
There were six stars of the evening.
The oldtimers with their last-chance oratory and the newtimers with their just-hatched words inspired some of this afternoon’s headlines.
For one of the few times in history, perhaps, it can be said that speechmaking was the diamond moment of the evening:
Saundra Davis went out in the style that has endeared her to many and displeased others. Ms. Davis’s comprehensive fare thee well was capped off with awards from pertinent organizations citing her unique service and recognition as the first African American elected to office in Culver City 84 years after its founding.
Dr. Dana Russell’s unscripted, light-hearted goodbye was a perfect fit.
Taciturn Jessica Beagles Roos’s most entertaining presentation was 11 1/2 words longer than all of her speeches combined in the last eight years.
One of two openly gay members of the rearranged School Board, Kathy Paspalis proudly acknowledged this at her swearing-in ceremony where the judge in charge of the induction observed the state of gay and lesbian electees across America.
Prof. Patricia Siever knocked insistently on the doors of the hearts of audience members. She recounted the trainwreck parents she was born to and overcame, a father in San Quentin and a mother inordinately fond of alcoholic libations. As if to attach an exclamation point to the story of her rise to conquest, she was sworn in by the classiest, most dapper and rhetorically royal college president in Los Angeles, Mark Rocha of West L.A. College, her boss.
Karlo Silbiger, the premier speechifier among old and new Boardies, did not disappoint. And it was a touching scene when his parents, Gary Silbiger and Barbara Honig, both long-serving elected officials, swore him in.
People, Not Things
Tribute extensively was paid to the swath of volunteers who drove the always-favored Measure EE parcel tax campaign to victory by a wide margin.
But this was a night for people, not things.
Two of the important persons in the Lin Howe cafetorium with job security, School District Supt. Dr. Myrna Rivera Cote and just-elected Board President Steve Gourley, sat side by side at the wheel of the mandated ceremonies. Deftly, they stuffed time-wasting adjectives into their hip pockets. Just facts, m’am ad sir — almost. They guided the fast-paced program over the finish line with professional aplomb, a phrase Dr. Cote declined to use for, some would say, good reason. She just knew it would irresistibly tempt the witty and puckish Mr. Gourley to wield a wicked punchline
And so, having accumulated an equally divided 24 years on the Board among them, departing was fairly sweet sorrow, three moments of daunting consequence when Dr. Russell, Ms. Beagles Roos and Ross Davis said goodbye.
When they stood and donned their winter gear before the meeting was over, that dramatically accented their final split.
Several snapshots:
When Dr. Russell led off the speechmaking by the retirees, several persons, encouraged, dashed out the door to start their engines, sensing an early finish. No folderol here, Dr. Russell suggested. “I didn’t prepare any remarks,” he said wryly, while noting that serving for eight sometimes stressful years did not allow him to live the life of wryly. “I felt people had heard enough from me over the years,” he said.
Ms. Davis stepped into the time breach and closely reviewed her record and achievements. No one expects this to be her final sally into politics.
Ms. Beagles Roos read a speech that made some wonder why she had not been more vocally strenuous earlier.
Prof. Siever provided two separate softer interludes, forgetting to mentioned a family member in one instant, namely her husband, Dr. Luther Henderson, and the whole darned family the other time.
The line that will be remembered longest came from Ms. Paspalis, an attorney by day, when it was her turn, as a new member, to declare herself.
“I find the less I say, the less often I am misquoted.”
On a night apparently deemed unfit for risk-taking, Ms. Paspalis succinctly concluded.
