Even to those Culver City residents who only knew him from a distance, it was obvious, not just evident, Albert Vera not only lived life his way, he was sui generis.
Definitely not a carbon copy of anybody whom anyone ever has known.
No one ever said Mr. Vera reminded the speaker of a family member or a friend because no one in western Los Angeles ever has known of a single person containing so many complicated, crisscrossing currents swimming for dear life inside of him.
When he died, unexpectedly, at his Sunkist Park home around 8:30 on Monday morning at the age of 75, Culver City’s No. 1 citizen left behind a rich trove of story material destined to outlive all 40,000 residents of the community.
So firmly is the outsized image of the medium-tall, distinguished businessman-politician cemented into the foundation of Culver City that newcomers or strangers may assume he has been a towering fixture, the unchallenged star of the community, for a lifetime.
Hardly.
Mr. Vera was 57 years old when he entered public life in 1992 — late for most ambitious people. But he never ran according to anyone else’s schedule.
When he won election to one of the three open seats on the City Council that spring, he finished first.
That was the way his tens of thousands of cheering admirers ever since have regarded him — as a powerful, invulnerable, largely sinless, bullet-proof personality, a smiling friend of the mighty, permanently holding an outstretched hand to the needy, a supreme visionary, irretrievably, hopelessly in deep, sincere love with his adopted hometown and his beloved Italian heritage — a dazzling complicated portrait he played no small part in molding.
To prove to the least of the skeptics how much he treasured his utterly inviolable Italian ancestry, Mr. Vera spoke Italian for the rest of his life after emigrating to America as a 15-year-old.
His thick-veined Italian lexicon was inextricably weaved into a creative and charming version of English for the last 60 years.
Whatever it was that came out was induplicable, pieces of Italian, pieces of English lovingly associated only with Mr. Vera for all of his days.
His Political Career
Therefore, malaprops were as integral to his persona as his snow-white wavy hair, his snow-white moustache and his powder blue smock.
Never were his malaprops on wider or more appreciated display than during his three terms on the City Council, 1992-2000, and 2002-2006.
The now ingrained concept of term limits for Council members in Culver City — two four-year terms followed by two years on the sideline before regaining eligibility — sprang from the fertile mind of Mr. Vera. This is an oddity from one who craved public office. Not necessarily, says Steve Gourley, who sat beside him throughout the 1990s. “Albert believed that no one should feel as if he owns the office,” Mr. Gourley said.
For almost 50 years, Mr. Vera operated one of the inarguably great delis in Southern California, Sorrento Italian Market, foot-stomping accent — and we do mean accent — on the middle word. Mr. Vera and his market were more closely linked to each other than his mouth was to his face.
In earlier times, the King of Italy, in these days the Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, could have taken over Sorrento, and no matter how Italian they were, it would not have been nearly as tasty, nearly as meaningful, nearly as Albert, nearly as appealing, as it was when Mr. Vera was at the wheel.
Further, entrepreneurs would swap their bank accounts for a slice of Mr. Vera’s regular daily clientele.
Name That Town
The arresting spices and exotic scents that permeated Sorrento Italian Market’s sub- and sub-divided main room heavily, almost awkwardly, crowded with product remained with a customer’s nostrils forever.
You entered a faraway, perhaps long ago, world at your first step inside what almost everyone called “Albert’s store.” This was a delicious, non-fattening taste of Italy without ever setting sail from Culver City.
His critics took pleasure in saying that if the patriarch of Culver City were in a stadium, his fans and his disparagers would be evenly divided — to which his defenders replied:
“This is true of every strong personality, every leader, every decision-maker, every supremely confident and assertive person.”
As with many extraordinary men, foggy myth and history fell in love with each other early in his career. Like identical twins, no one, including Mr. Vera, could tell them apart in later years — or wanted to.
A romantic and a sentimentalist, assets that complemented his celebrated talent as a visionary, you probably could win sizable bets around Culver City this afternoon if you knew Mr. Vera’s birthplace.
It was Pietramelara, a small town in the province of Caserta, Italy, according to the fanily.
Pietramelara is a formulation hardly anyone remembers. Possibly this is because 12-letter words were not Mr. Vera’s specialty.
