funeral service for the late former mayor who died on february 1 at the age of 88. he served to three terms as the mayor from 1978-1989. this portion of the service's 20 minutes. -- service is 20 minutes. >> i come to the -- with the love and condolences of the new yorkers that are grieving with you at this minute. ed to be loving all this attention. i was thrilled he picked my neighborhood for his funeral. president clinton

president clinton and rudy giuliani and governor cuomo and governor schumer and city and state federal and international officials and dignitaries, friends and family, fellow new yorkers, everyone is here today. i have no doubt ed is beaming and watching us down here. before last year's state of the city speech, we ran a video that included a shot of ed denting at -- standing at the entrance ramp and yelling to all the cars that approached,, welcome to my bridge. welcome to my bridge. [laughter] needless to say, he brought down the house. after the cameras stopped rolling, he stayed out there in the freezing cold shouting, welcome to my bridge. he loved it and we loved him. no mayor i think has ever embodied the spirit of new york city like he did. i do not think anyone will. brash and irreverent, full of humor, he was our city's it essential mayor.

it was an attitude he displayed for the world every day. we have such respect for him. it was matched by his integrity, intelligence, and independence. i was lucky enough to get an endorsement from him for first term of mayor. he was one of the few people crazy enough to back me. i do not know a thing of politics. i always remember that advice he gave me. he said, be yourself, say what you believe, and not worry what people think. god knows he did not worry about it. he was a genuine politician as america has ever seen. he understood that if you take tough stances and give it to the people straight, they will respect you for being honest, even when they do not agree with you. he scared the heck out of press

secretaries, but the average citizen in new york city admired him. he was a gifted student of human nature, but also a student of government policy. he had a voracious appetite for information. his candor sometimes overshadowed the fact that his opinions were informed by tireless studies of the issues. over the years, many people turn to him for advice, including me. no one understood the job like he did and no one was more eager to talk about it. he was always available, always direct, always wise. i remember a time we were talking about how to tackle obesity. he said limit the size of drinks. no one will notice. [laughter] then there was the time he told me, that being mayor three times, go for it. what could i do?

after he was first inaugurated, he said, "i will act as a one term a year and as a result i will be a three term mayor." he did the key success was throwing political caution to the wind. it is easy to forget how easy our city needed that kind of leadership. the new york that he inherited is almost unimaginable today. miles of abandoned buildings and filthy streets that were unsafe to walk in daylight, much less at night, and a government that was broken and stopped functioning. the south bronx and other neighborhoods looked like they had been bombed in an air raid. new york was in a state of despair and decay. for the first time in our long history, the whole city seemed to be in terminal decline. new york has always been a

magnet for people, for growth and progress. in the 1970s, that had ceased to be true. then came koch. he held up his hands as that, enough. we will not accept this. our best days are still ahead. he convinced us we could still be great again. he understood how tough our problems were. he had the confidence to believe that our problems could be cured. he not only arrested the decline and showed that the unruly city was governable, he not only restore the fiscal health and made us that nation's economic engine, not only building affordable housing, not only made new york city once again a national leader in equal rights, arts, and culture, but he did something even more important.

he restored the ark of our nation's city. before, we had lost our way. thanks to him, we became great again. that was not inevitable. ed made it so. the city we know today would not exist without him. everything that rudy giuliani and i have accomplished is built on the foundation that ed laid. it is a foundation that is strong and unshakable as his faith in the genius and beauty of new york and his faith in god. you will be happy to know that i have been to my biblical research. it is only fiction that this -- fitting that this torah portion is about moses leading the jews out of egypt. ed was our moses, but with a

little less hair. [laughter] he did not part of the red sea, but he broke out a strike i shouting words of encouragement. just as moses died before he reached the promised land, ed died hours before the documentary about him opened in theaters. leave it to him to maximize publicity about a film of his life. no one entered the theater of politics more than him. no one was ever better at it. as much fun as it was to watch him as mayor, the real show began when he left public office -- lawyer, professor, judge, restaurant reviewer, reform organizer, twitter user, even radio host. the press and politicians never stopped asking his opinions. he never stopped offering them.

he remained as sharp as ever and as relevant as ever right up to his dying day. as you know, ed will be buried at trinity cemetery in upper manhattan. think about it -- a polish jew in an episcopal graveyard in a large dominican neighborhood. [laughter] he admired people of all faiths. on his tombstone, it chose to have the last words of daniel pearl, who was beheaded over seas. it was inscribed with the words -- my father is jewish. my mother is jewish. i am jewish. has there ever been a simpler on a more eloquent statement of pride in one's faith and in one's people than those 11 words? it was deeply moving to many of

us when we really see died on the anniversary of daniel pearl's murder. a few years ago, we need a video of some of the tough times the city has been through. we asked him, would you ever live anywhere else? he smiled and said, the only place i would accept his heaven. nothing else would take the place. it is not hard to picture ed getting up to heaven and meeting god and saying with a smile, how did i do? there is no doubt -- cardinal, you will not be happy with this -- but i'm telling you i have met god. god said, ed, you did great. you really did great. god bless you, ed koch. god bless the city you love so much and served so well. [applause]

>> members of the family, the mayors and governors, senators, other dignitaries that are here, yesterday i flew home from japan after spending eight hours there. it was ed koch's asked gift to -- last gift to me. you pick up a whole day when you

come back from japan. in our days, every day counts. [laughter]so, thank you, mayor. i come here to speak for myself and also for hillary, who loved him very much and was grateful for his endorsement in every race she ran. after she became a senator, he said, you know, i was for you. new yorkers, we come from everywhere and not everyone can be lucky like me. but you have got to get better at this. every holiday season four years, he organized a lunch. ed koch, hillary, and -- i have yet to receive a full

report on any of those lunches, but it was so typically ed. you know, we were told not to speak long. this is not my speech. these are the letters i got from ed koch when i was president. [laughter] i thought i would tell you about them. he really weighed in on what i was trying to pass a farm bill in 1995. he supported more police on the street and a ban on assault weapons. but there was a whole another section of that bill that provided more funds for young

people in troubled neighborhoods and engage in positive activities. then he wrote me a whole bunch of letters over three years basically saying i have not done enough on that. one letter co-authored with a distinguished harvard professor and another. saying it was imperative to give young people who had gotten in trouble a second chance, that they should be given a chance to do something else. if they got their ged stayed up drugs, the record should be sealed and convictions should be purged so they were ever asked if they had a criminal conviction, they could honestly say no. you have to give people a

second chance. and there was a letter about the holocaust memorial. his unfailing support of israel. it was a fascinating letter about the importance of not giving up on missile defense research. this do it. -- he said, just do it. the scientist need work and we will share it all. there were some that were rather funny. he was very proud of the anti- smoking initiative. he hated cigarette smoke. he loved the fact that senator mccain and others made progress and try to roll back the tide of cigarette use, especially young people. late in my tenure, mccain tried

another bill and it did not pass and i could not pass it. he was mad and said, we have got to do something to convince young people to quit smoking. there has been a new study that says it affects virility. now politicians do not like to talk about this, but young people are much more sophisticated than older people. they get this. that does not work to tell them they will get cancer diseases. go after the verility element. [laughter] then in 2000 when he became concerned about the election, he sent me a column that he wrote. with the 10 point victory for the democrats in 2000.

there was a was a campaign- finance reform, universal healthcare, and he wanted no tax cuts until the debt was paid down. mr. mayor, it is not just new york that owes him a lot. he had a lot of other interesting things. he still wanted to give young people a second chance. he used to say he was a liberal, but he was sane. i do not think i ever debated, discussed anybody in this line of work who had a better feel for the impact of what people in government did on the real-life

people. he could imagine what life was like. one of his great second chance ideas was that there ought to be a universal scouting program for america for really young people. i have been out of montana and meeting with people. if every kid in america was in this, we would not have half the problems we got. ed said, no, it wouldn't. we would have our less than this. we should let all of these kids have nothing else to do and disaffiliated and reconnected to the mainstream of life by giving them something positive to be a part of. mayor koch wrote 10 non-fiction books, four mysteries, and four children's books.

childhood obesity is the number one pandemic in america today. the mayor got a lot of laughs out of his soda remarks, but there is truth there. he was thinking about what life would be like for the youngest people if they made choices or had choices forced on them but would foreclose their futures. ed koch wanted us all to shape up. i sent him a note on his 88th birthday. he sent me a letter back.

he had a big brain, but he had a bigger heart. ed -- how she doing? she is doing fine, but she misses you. we are all doing fine, but we missed you. we miss you so much because we all know we are doing a lot better because you lived and served. [applause]