By Sam Adams

Vera Katz, whose memorial is today, became one of the most influential political leaders in Oregon history. I had the honor of being her campaign manager, then her mayoral chief of staff for 11 years, giving me a behind-the-scenes view of her legacy.

She was born in Dusseldorf, Germany, to Russian parents and her Jewish family escaped the Nazis by hiking over the Pyrenees mountains. They eventually landed in Brooklyn, as refuge immigrants, making Vera someone we might today consider to be a type of Dreamer.

Vera often told me that public schools and New York's embrace of immigrants are what set her up to have a good life. Her degree in sociology from Brooklyn College, a public university, cemented her belief that government can do great things, especially for underdogs. Her dance improvisation training by Martha Graham trained her to think fast.

When she became speaker of the Oregon House, she had no greater policy passion than education, which she viewed as a great equalizer. She authored a far-reaching education reform bill. When she ran for mayor, she campaigned on bringing her school reforms to Portland.

Some thought her plans were unrealistic -- after all, the city isn't responsible for schools. Making matters more dicey, the same election that swept her into office also brought Measure 5, the law that devastated funding for education and other services.

Thankfully, Vera didn't let critics or tradition hold her back. Instead of letting class sizes balloon and school years contract, she made a controversial and unprecedented decision: To use city money to help schools. It was the right call. Without the decade of support, Portland's public schools would be in much worse shape today.

A feminist, she had an allergic reaction to nonsense, and she negotiated with skill. Often the only woman at the table, she took advantage of the fact that people sometimes underestimated her. Out-of-state developers were the worst. When they met a diminutive woman dressed in bright colors at the head of the table, they often misdiagnosed the meeting Vera had asked for as courtesy call. Nope.

For any major development project, Vera called in the investors and let them know what she thought of their plans. She frequently schooled them on how their projects needed to improve the city, not just extract profits from it. She then sometimes put the developers on remedial improvement plans that included personal follow-up meetings with her. It worked. Her vigilance helped turned many ugly developments into beautiful ones that contributed to the city and made housing more affordable.

To Vera, smart city growth also included greater investments in the arts, which she considered key strands of a city's DNA. With leaders like City Commissioner Mike Lindberg, Vera brought new respect -- and funding -- to organizations such as the Oregon Symphony, Oregon Ballet Theatre, the Portland Art Museum, White Bird and Portland Center Stage. She also wanted to make sure more people enjoyed Portland, leading the lightrail expansion and negotiating the public-private deal to bring MAX to the airport. She also found the money for the streetcar track between the Pearl District and Portland State University.

With police, she took it personally. Perhaps because of the danger and mayhem of her early years, Vera considered it her responsibility to keep the peace. She stayed up late listening to the the scanner, worrying about about the safety of officers and residents. And she spent many nights on police ride-alongs.

Her close watch of the bureau spurred her to make big changes. She demanded the bureau improve its real-time data collection. She asked for performance measures to address racial disparities and interactions between citizens and police. Some in the department and the union questioned whether Vera had the qualifications to push for these reforms. They accused her of micromanaging. The police chief retired. But Vera did not back down.

She found a new chief, Charles Moose, Portland's first African American to lead the department. Every Friday at 10 a.m., she chaired the Gang Group meeting in Northeast Portland, where residents, police and businesses teamed up to reduce violence and improve community policing.

I'll especially miss her New York sense of humor. She teased and needled people close to her with warmth and affection. And she rarely withheld her opinions. One year, I asked her what she wanted for her birthday. She said, "I haven't had a homemade red velvet cake in years."

I spent most of one Saturday preparing a meal, working hard on the cake. But when Vera bit into it, she blurted out, "This tastes like a brick with frosting on it." With a cackle, she excoriated my baking "skills," pretended to be horrified by how little I'd learned from my years working at Mr. Steak, and said she hoped I was better at helping to negotiate the River District plan than at following a cake recipe.

If pressed to reflect on her life of public service, I suspect Vera would have referred to the adapted George Bernard Shaw quote that was framed and hanging in her city hall office. "The reasonable woman adapts herself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to herself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable woman." Indeed.

Thank you, Vera for being so wonderfully "unreasonable."

Sam Adams worked as Mayor Vera Katz's chief of staff for 11 years and later, served a term as Portland's mayor from 2009 to 2012.