Grieving husband Steven Tishman said goodbye to his tragic wife, Erica Tishman, at a packed Manhattan funeral on Thursday — two days after she died at age 60 after being struck by a falling piece of building facade while walking to work through Midtown.
A massive crowd of some 2,000 mourners listened inside an Upper East Side synagogue as Tishman spoke.
“She packed 100 years of love and friendship and activities into 60 years,” the grieving husband said, noting her generosity, energy and consummate time management skills in balancing her career and charity work with her life as a wife and mother.
“She lived a full life and she had no regrets at all,” he said.
“I have been in love with her from the very first day that I met her in Princeton, in October 1978,” he told mourners.
“Our love was unconditional and pure. We had an incredible marriage. We never took a day off from each other in 37 years of marriage.
“The greatest gift that Erica ever gave me, other than my children, was my wedding ring. I truly believe that I hit the jackpot. You don’t know this but from every morning from the day that we met — every day since 1982 — told her that I loved her and I took her face in my hands and kissed her before I left for work every day.
“For 37 years we did that every day. And Erica would always say that that particular kiss wasn’t good enough. It was our little joke, that she wanted another kiss. Those were the last words she said to me on Tuesday before she passed away. I will never be able to do that again.”
The funeral was held at the Central Synagogue at Lexington Avenue and 55th Street, across town from where Tishman died at West 49th Street and Seventh Avenue.
A lifelong New Yorker and mother of three adult children, she died just 10 minutes from the Zubatkin Owner Representation construction project management firm where she had served as vice president.
The Harvard grad was walking past 729 Seventh Ave. when a piece of its facade broke free and fatally struck her. The tower had been cited in April for “failure to maintain exterior building facade and appurtenances,” according to city building records.
Protective scaffolding has since been erected around the building, where a worker described the facade’s limestone and stucco as “just crumbling.”
