Second in a series.
Re: “Andy and Mehaul – Their Final 146 Days”
While getting ready for this evening’s resplendent 6 o’clock Christmas tree lighting in Downtown, it was Vice Mayor Andy Weissman who brought up the dreaded subject of The End.
“This begins my farewell tour,” he said, and that is news.
Mr. Weissman has served the city in a remarkable and prestigious streak spanning a variety of appointed and elected positions for 32 years.
In 1983, when Culver City was unrecognizably different from its glamourous stature of today, Mr. Weissman was appointed to the Parks and Recreation Commission.
He went on to the Civil Service Commission, the Planning Commission, and finally two terms on the City Council.
In 2007, he chaired the Charter Review Committee, charged with revising and sensitively updating Culver City’s constitution.
All of that is available in the one-dimensional record books.
The massive part left out of the Andy Weissman Story on the books is far more valuable and revealing – the man himself, his soul, his makeup, the deeply buried inherent qualities that have distinguished him from his colleagues.
When Culver City historian Julie Lugo Cerra and others look back on the favorite City Hall personalities of their lifetimes, they will recall the temper of some, the volubility of some, the indecisiveness of some, the reliable rating of some, the wisdom of some, the detachment of others.
Mr. Weissman arrived in 1983 with the same calm, disciplined, restrained, incisive, balanced, carefully apportioned subtly humorous makeup that he now presents every second and fourth Monday evenings in Council Chambers.
If you watching Council meetings on television and turn down the sound, study the round face of Mr. Weissman. He changes expressions less often than a statue does, though friends, colleagues, clients in his law practice and occasional interlocutors will tell you he is the most accessible person they ever have known in public life.
When Mr. Weissman was 32 years younger than he is today striding down the middle aisle of his 60s, even then there was something fatherly about his approach to governing.
Hemingway has been dead almost as long as Mr. Weissman has been alive.
This means it is safe to pass along the honor of being called Papa to the soon-to-be-term-limited model City Councilman.
(To be continued)
