Personality as big as the Apple he served – & saved

Michael Goodwin

He boasted that he didn't get ulcers, he gave them. He declared himself the "mayatollah," insisted he was a liberal with sanity and called his opponents wackos.

Ed Koch was a Borscht-belt comic and a holy terror, often simultaneously. He was also one of the greatest mayors of modern New York.

He rescued the city from financial ruin — everybody knows that — but he did something else that, in the long run, was more important. By force of personality, he saved the city from the corrosive fear that a broke and battered Gotham would never come back and wasn't even worth the effort.

NY Post: David Rentas

As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan told me in a 1984 interview, "History will record Koch as having given back New York City its morale. And that is a massive achievement."

Indeed it was, and the dense, thriving, cosmopolitan New York that exists today wouldn't have been possible without Koch. His determined leadership laid the foundation for the success of his successors.

My own relationship with Koch spanned 30 years, not all of them smooth, but we ended as allies and friends. Our final conversation came Wednesday.

He was in the hospital, and I called his office to pass along wishes for a speedy recovery and to say I had seen the documentary film about him called, what else, "Koch."

When his office later connected us, he sounded weak, but focused. I told him the standing-room-only crowd at Tuesday's premiere loved the film, which pleased him. He then made the point that director Neil Barsky had given him veto power over any unwanted content.

"I didn't ask him to change a thing," Koch said, with clear pride. Not just about the final product, but with his own restraint, given that there were moments in the movie he couldn't have enjoyed.

Restraint, of course, is not a word usually associated with Koch. He loved to eat almost as much as he loved political conflict. He could curse like the World War II combat veteran he was and loved the limelight that came with saying whatever popped into his head.

Some of it was calculated and some a mistake. He later regretted closing a Harlem hospital that inflamed his relationship with many black New Yorkers.

But time offers proper perspective, and the final roll call is that his accomplishments stood the test of history. Had he failed, New York and the nation would be poorer for it. He was legitimately rewarded for becoming the symbol of the city's rebirth.

For 12 exhilarating and exhausting years, he was the mayor everywhere, all the time, every day. A generation came of age thinking he really was mayor for life.

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