The Office of Emergency Management has announced that NYPD helicopters will conduct a flyover of Fifth Avenue and East 65th Street in honor of Ed Koch's memorial service. The funeral will take place this morning at the Temple Emanu-El at 11 a.m., with Bill Clinton said to be in attendance. According to the OEM, the helicopters will flyover at 9 a.m. and noon.
Mayor Bloomberg, Koch's former chief-of-staff Diane Coffey and friends James Gill and John LoCicero are slated to speak at the funeral, with Bloomberg giving the eulogy. Clinton is also expected to speak; his spokesman tells CNN, "He will be there as a long-standing friend of Ed's."
Koch, who died at age 88 from congestive heart failure on Friday, will be buried at Trinity Church in Washington Heights. The headstone inscription chosen by the three-term mayor will bear the last words of slain journalist Daniel Pearl: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish," and the Jewish prayer, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One." It will also feature Koch's own self-penned epitaph: "He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith. He fiercely defended the city of New York, and he fiercely loved its people. Above all, he loved his country, the United States of America, in whose armed forces he served in World War II."
