Santa Monica Bids Final Farewell to Ilona Jo Katz

By Jorge Casuso

It was Santa Monica's version of a state funeral.

A crowd of more than 300 - many of then longtime civic and community leaders - gathered at the Santa Monica College amphitheatre under sunny skies Sunday to bid farewell to Ilona Jo Katz, who died Wednesday after a 30-year bout with cancer.

Then the crowd - which included members of all political stripes -- filed across Pico Boulevard to bury her on grounds across the street from the institution to which she devoted three decades of her life as a member of its Board of Trustees.

"Ilona was convinced that education leads to civic understanding, and with that understanding she believed that hatred would be gone," said David Viar, executive director of the Community College League of California.

"She was a fighter for education," Viar said. "She never stopped working to make it better.... Ilona left a mark for us all, a legacy for us to follow. When personal hurdles appeared, she knocked them down, ran around them or leapt over them. Ilona never stopped putting others first."

The hour-long ceremony provided an inside glimpse at a charming, determined woman who liked to wear hats and down her vodka straight - Absolute - and who made those around her feel they had someone who genuinely cared.

"Ilona was more than just a trustee," said Tom Donner, the college's executive vice president. "She was a sister to me, someone I could confide in, talk to, someone who really cared about me and what was happening in this college, in this community."

Whenever Donner's son visited the Katzes, the boy returned with flowers from Ilona (it was always Ilona, not Mrs. Katz.)

"She always had time for a small child," Donner said. "Life was too serious to take serious all the time. She knew it had to be enjoyed.

"She always had a twinkle in her eye, and you knew when you walked in that room and she gave you that wink that everything was okay," Donner said. "It's difficult to lose a sister, but I know you're not really gone."

Childhood friend Gail Prince introduced the crowd to a young Ilona who was the Beverly Hills High School's star actress and socialite, a girl who practiced her dance steps at the local record shop and was a strong presence as one of the school's safety patrols.

"She was always the leader, always the star," Prince said. "She was strikingly beautiful with a mischievous wit."

Later, when Katz battled cancer for the last 30 years of her life and lost her two sons, she would serve as a role model who taught others never to give up, Prince said.

"We have stood in awe as the dreadful adversities you faced never diminished your faith," Prince said. "Whatever we were to each other, that we still are."

Ilona's husband, former City Councilman Herb Katz, then thanked the many doctors who helped prolong his wife's life.

"If it wasn't for them, we would have been here 15 years ago," Katz said. "Without the love and care, she would have been gone a long time ago.

"None of us lost," Katz said. "None of you lost. We won time, far more time than if they didn't care."

Then, after their daughter Dana Katz-Wood played Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are" on the piano, the crowd stood and silently watched as the casket was wheeled tthrough the theater's wings for burial at Woodlawn Cemetery.

At the gravesite, former mayors and consultants, city officials, educators and friends gathered for a final farewell.

"What you have to think about is the legacy," college president and superintendent Piedad Robertson told a friend.

And then, wearing the red hat Ilona wore when they first met at an Independence Day celebration, Robertson departed with the crowd.