Engraver etches wrong birth year on Ed Koch tombstone

(JTA) — A tombstone engraver made Ed Koch nearly two decades younger after carving the wrong birth year into the New York City mayor’s granite slab.

Tommy Flynn of Flynn Funeral & Cremation Memorial Centers Inc. transposed two numbers in Koch’s birth year, making him born in 1942 rather than 1924, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Koch died on Feb. 1 at 88. He supervised the engraving of his tombstone except for the dates of birth and death.

The stone includes the last words of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan in 2002: “My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish.”

Flynn told The New York Times he would fix the error within three weeks.

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