Workers at the Trinity Church Cemetery in Manhattan prepared former Mayor Edward I. Koch's grave site on Friday. Mr. Koch will be buried there after his funeral Monday.
Edward I. Koch, the three-term New York City mayor who died at 88 on Friday, will be celebrated on Monday as a transformational figure in the city’s history and a quintessential New Yorker.
Former President Bill Clinton cut short a trip to Japan to return to New York to speak at Mr. Koch’s funeral, which is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. at Temple Emanu-El on the East Side of Manhattan.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who is scheduled to deliver the eulogy at the ceremony, praised his predecessor as a “charismatic cheerleader and champion” during his weekly radio address on Sunday.
“Back in the 1970s, the whole city was crumbling around us,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Then we elected Ed Koch. He was a civic savior for a city in desperate need of one, and he will be remembered as one of the greatest – and most important – mayors in our city’s long history.”
Tributes have continued pouring in from around the world since Mr. Koch died.
While he was alive, the Queensboro Bridge was named in his honor, and now Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York is pushing to have the 77th Street station on the No. 6 line renamed for Mr. Koch, despite the fact that subway stations are not traditionally named in honor of people.
At Monday’s service, Mr. Koch was expected to be remembered not only for his love of the city but also as a fierce defender of Israel. The Israeli consul general is among the dignitaries scheduled to speak.
The limestone Romanesque synagogue where services are being held, at Fifth Avenue and 65th Street, is one of the nation’s oldest and most prominent Jewish institutions.
With a sanctuary that stands 103 feet tall, 100 feet wide and 175 feet long and has seating for 2,500 people, it is one of the largest Jewish houses of worship in the world.
The congregation first formed in 1845 and today includes some of New York’s most prominent citizens, including Mr. Bloomberg and former Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
Mr. Koch will be buried at Trinity Church Cemetery in northern Manhattan, where he purchased a grave before his death. He paid $20,000 for the plot, ensuring that he would never have to leave the city he loved.
He installed his tombstone, where the words engraved on the marker were spoken by the journalist Daniel Pearl just before he was killed by Islamic extremists in 2002: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.”
Mr. Koch also wrote his own epitaph.
“He was fiercely proud of his Jewish faith,” the inscription reads. “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.”
Mr. Koch was born in Crotona Park East in the Bronx on Dec. 12, 1924, the second of three children of Louis and Joyce Silpe Koch, Polish Jews who had immigrated to New York separately in the early 1900s.
He eventually rose to the pinnacle of power in New York City, when he was elected as the city’s 105th mayor, serving from Jan. 1, 1978, to Dec. 31, 1989.
