{"id":18982,"date":"2013-02-03T16:18:31","date_gmt":"2013-02-03T21:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=18982"},"modified":"2013-02-04T12:34:53","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T17:34:53","slug":"a-farewell-to-ed-koch-plus-the-week-in-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/a-farewell-to-ed-koch-plus-the-week-in-review\/","title":{"rendered":"A Farewell to Ed Koch, Plus the Week in Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

I felt like an era ended when former New York City mayor Ed Koch died at 88 on Friday. When Koch became New York City’s mayor in 1978, I had just turned 10;<\/a> his third and final term ended on Dec. 31, 1989, eight days after I turned 22.\u00a0 He was the mayor of my childhood, even though my family lived in Mahwah, N.J. I mean, he was The Mayor. The only mayor! He was the one on the local newscasts and in the pages of the New York Times. I had no idea who Mahwah’s mayor was. To me, the mayor was like the president: there was one, and it was Ed Koch, just like there was one city, and that was New York City. The title “Hizzoner” seemed to have been invented for Koch (it wasn’t<\/a>). To this day, when I think “mayor,” I envision Ed Koch.\u00a0 I had always hoped to meet him. He was the quintessential New Yorker, so we thought the same way about a lot of things. For instance, New Jersey:<\/p>\n

“I don’t want to leave Manhattan, even when I’m gone. This is my home. The thought of having to go to New Jersey was so distressing to me,” Koch said after purchasing a Manhattan burial plot in 2008<\/a>.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He also said about Albany, N.Y.:<\/p>\n

“Have you ever lived in the suburbs? It’s sterile. It’s nothing. It’s wasting your life.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Columnist Joe Klein diagnosed Koch with Wisenheimer\u2019s Syndrome<\/a>. Was Koch being a wisenheimer when he suggested protecting the New York subway system from graffiti by installing wild wolves to protect the trains? I don’t know; it seems effective to me.<\/p>\n