Best Medicine for a Weak Ed Koch May Be a Birthday Party With Friends

Yana Paskova for The New York Times Edward I. Koch, seated, with, from left, Diane Coffey, his former chief of staff; James Capalino, a former city commissioner; and Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, on Wednesday at a party at Gracie Mansion.

When former Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming traveled across the Queensboro Bridge last week, he noticed that it bore the name of an old friend from his days in Congress: former Mayor Edward I. Koch.

So he called Mr. Koch, right away. And, according to a ver sion of the exchange that Mr. Koch recounted on Wednesday night, an impressed Mr. Simpson said: “I've never seen anything like this. How did you get them to do that?”

Mr. Koch, looking a bit puzzled, said he was very grateful that one of his successors, Michael R. Bloomberg, had backed the bridge's renaming. After all, he mused, give or take a salty adjective, “I never did a thing for Abe Beame.”

The occasion was Mr. Koch's 88th birthday party, in what has become an annual ritual under Mr. Bloomberg at a place Mr. Koch called home for three terms, Gracie Mansion. But this year, the party had more of a fingers-crossed emotional tenor, as Mr. Koch just checked out of a hospital on Monday after a few days of treatment for a lung infection.

And while Mr. Koch needed more assistance from longtime friends, and seemed more fatigued, than at previous parties, he stil l delighted the crowd, made up mostly of former staff members, with his trademark humor, and a dollop of wistfulness, too.

Yana Paskova for The New York Times At 88, Mr. Koch still has a few jokes left in him.

There were notable politicians, including former Senator Alfonse M. D'Amato, and three elected officials who are presumed to be seeking higher office in 2013 - Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker; Bill de Blasio, the public advocate; and Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president. There was a trailer from the forthcoming documentary “Koch.” And, after a warm introduction from a beaming Mr. Bloomberg, there was Mr. Koch himself.

“I wake up every morning and I say, Oh, I'm still in New York!” he said at one point.

But the story about Mr. Simpson produced some of the biggest laughs. So in a telephone interview afterward from his home in Wyoming, Mr. Simpson confirmed his conversation with Mr. Koch (the call was on Dec. 4) and said, diplomatically, that he could not recall Mr. Koch's specifically mentioning Mr. Beame. But the gist was there.

“I said, Ed, you old S.O.B. They haven't even named an outdoor toilet seat after me here in Wyoming,” Mr. Simpson said.

Mr. Simpson was glad to hear that Mr. Koch had left the hospital.

“I hope he heals up,” he said, adding that when he returns to New York in the next week or two, “I'll call him again, and this time, we'll do lunch.”