Seated amidst the lush, timeless greenery of the smartly contemporary Raintree condo complexes, it was easy to imagine Paul Jacobs as chair of Culver City’s Centennial Year committee.
In the last century, he was the youngest person elected to the City Council, and in both centuries he has been a successful attorney.
In both centuries, Mr. Jacobs quietly has been one of Culver City’s most respected out-front persons.
Soft-spoken-ness and dignity are the main identifying marks of Mr. Jacobs’s personality.
One of the pearls that makes Culver City unique – and has for decades – is that both the leadership class and ordinary residents maintain an inordinate interest in the background, the history of the community where they live and play.
Somewhere in Culver City, the name of Harry Culver is mentioned in formal or casual conversations.
Residents who have lived here more than one week know at least the outlines of the Harry Culver City. Mr. Jacobs’s wife Joy is a ranking member of the Culver City Historical Society, which has a significant profile.
Another reason Culver City residents are history-conscious, Mr. Jacobs noted, is the often visible presence of the community historian Julie Lugo Cerra, whose family’s life here long pre-dates Mr. Culver’s arrival.
In few words, Mr. Jacobs himself is exactly the kind of leader Centennial organizers were seeking earlier this year.
Jim Clarke, the original major driving force behind the Centennial concept, reluctantly but necessarily, stepped aside as committee chair to carry out his new duties as mayor of Culver City throughout Centennial Year. No accident, it was planned that way.
The Centennial Year technically will open on Tuesday, Sept. 20, the 99th anniversary of the day on which the Founding Father, Harry Culver, a Midwestern realtor, secured a charter for the cluster of neighborhoods that grew up to be Culver City.
For the public, Centennial Year launches the following weekend.
A bare two months to wait until the party begins, Saturday, Sept. 24, with a lavish parade from the Vets Park in mid-town to The Culver Hotel in Downtown.
(To be continued)
I think that all the words about Paul Jacobs are describing him perfectly
You can add gentleness with foreign friends who ask silly questions !!
Thinking that I had the greatest pleasure to meet him when he married my penpal nearly fifty years ago, last century
Both of them are really the kind of people you are happy to have known and met and our french family remember the trips they made to visit us
This centennial gives me the greatest regret to be so far way