He would have loved the way he went out, on Memorial Day.
A proud Italian émigré, he regarded himself as a patriotic, trumpeting American of unsurpassed loyalty.
Albert Vera, a giant figure of iconic proportion in a wide web of modern Culver City history, possessor of an almost mythical personality with a towering list of attributes and a matchingly emphatic list of shortcomings, died this morning of a heart attack. He was 75 years old.
For the last 50 years, he owned and operated — equal accent on both — Sorrento’s Italian Market on South Sepulveda Boulevard, with his long seriously ailing wife Ursula, and sometimes with his son Albert Jr., known commonly as Junior.
For all of his life that was happily lived on the business end of a spotlight, much action took place far from view. He was said to have owned close to 100 working ranches in the Central Valley, and for many years, he tirelessly drove his faithful van back and forth, logging hundreds of miles every week.
Inarguably Culver City’s most prominent entrepreneur, especially the past two decades, Mr. Vera, a property owner of vast holdings, a volatile and extraordinary politician in his later years, ostensibly a kingmaker, linked by varying degrees to celebrities, he strode back and forth across Culver City, beginning in the 1990s, leaving enormous footprints and churning emotions. As often as he infused awestruck admirers with ballooning pride, he also left behind hurt feelings that endured for years..
Wherever he moved, controversy was a constant companion, particularly in his closing years, down to his concluding minutes. He was scheduled to appear in court tomorrow morning on a charge of brandishing a gun during a business dispute on Friday, April 16.
His volatility was legendary, in business and in his mercurial political career, when he served on the City Council and terms as mayor of Culver City. He is remembered for storming off the dais in Council Chambers in a rage, and he is remembered by the most ordinary citizens for unaccountably spectacular generosity.
Surely, at his direction, Sorrento’s has donated tons of sandwiches to worthy organizations across Culver City.
He was the man who was not supposed to die, so much power and influence were attributed him, lovingly by his legion of admirers, angrily by a sizable army of critics, just as stout and inflexible in their feelings.
Mr. Vera knew tragedy, the loss of one son and the spotty survival of the other son who has battled drugs. Junior is widely liked in the community. Ursula, his partner in marriage, for nearly a lifetime has been the attractive, personable lady behind the counter. Possibly she is the most popular member of the high profile family, amazingly surviving, even though her health has been in steep decline and fragile for at least 6 1/2 years.
