Oops. Wrong Birth Year Fixed On NYC Mayor Koch's Tombstone

By Korva Coleman

Published June 19, 2013 at 1:07 PM EDT

Look closely: Ed Koch's tombstone had the wrong birth date. It's fixed now, but the error had the late New York City mayor born in 1942, rather than 1924.

"You could call it a 'grave' mistake," says WNBC-TV of New York City.

The tombstone of Edward I. Koch, the city's colorful, three-term mayor who died in February, listed an incorrect birth date for him. Instead of showing Dec. 12, 1924, the year mistakenly read 1942 — until yesterday.

The company that prepared the headstone corrected it Tuesday using composite granite, according to CNN. The network also interviewed former Koch spokesman George Arzt, who said, "Ed would have loved this attention and called the situation 'ridiculous'!"

Tommy Flynn of Flynn Funeral and Cremation and Memorial Services, which engraved the stone, told the New York Daily News: "It was a simple mistake, and once it was brought to my attention I moved heaven and earth to fix it, because I admired the guy."

Koch had arranged for his headstone four years before his death, and inspected it when it was finished in 2009, says The New York Times. The last items to be filled in were his birth and death dates.

The mayor's former chief of staff, Diane Coffey, told WNBC, "As Ed Koch used to say, 'It's always important to correct the record.' "