Given the strong sense of modesty with which she lived her community-admired 74 years, Ursula Vera would have appreciated her funeral Mass this morning at St. Augustine Church.
The prevailing sign that Mrs. Vera was special to Culver City was the huge crowd of traditionally black-clad mourners, many with fresh tears, who streamed into the venerable 850-seat sanctuary.
In honor of her and, deflectively, of her late husband Albert, a former City Councilman and enduring icon across the community, City Hall was heavily represented.
But what made the abbreviated 55-minute service striking was that there were no spoken tributes, entirely fitting, friends said, for a woman who was a paragon of traditional wifely and motherly elegance, who resided contentedly in the shadow of her always-visible husband.
Even though she had lost one of her two sons and her husband in recent times, and failing health had shrunk the radius of her daily life, she persevered with cheer. “Ursula came to church to find consolation and trust,” said Father Kevin Nolan. “She always had a sense of wanting others to be lifted up, to know joy. Even in the midst of a terrible illness that wracked her body, she would ask, ‘How are you?’”
Mrs. Vera died Thursday, April 28, after at least a 5½ battle with chronic kidney disease.
