The Genuine Article

Goodbye Mr. Mayor...

Ed Koch

1924-2013

They broke the cookie press with Ed Koch, one of a kind before he became Mayor.  He loved to quip--"People really voted for me.  I got my message out there and they still voted for me."  He described himself as the one does not get ulcers--"I give ulcers!"  The New York Times captured his character by saying he embodied the City.  

But Koch, out among the people or facing a news media circus in the Blue Room at City Hall, he was a feisty, slippery egoist who could not be pinned down by questioners and who could out talk anybody in the authentic voice of New York: as opinionated as a Flatbush cabby, as loud as the scrums on 42nd Street, as pugnacious as a West Side reform Democrat mother.

For me the Jersey boy who grew up across the river....Koch was bigger than life before he died.  It usually takes death to exalt somebody to platitudes or Mt. Rushmore fame.  Not Koch. He was an Independent in political affiliation and character.  It took his chutzpah to tell New Yorkers to tighten their belts back into fiscal solvency.  

What is a genuine article, the real McCoy?  You're looking at him!  He resonates in us the best that we can be when we really dare to be who we really are.  He never saw his saw and went into hiding!