In the Business of Death, but Never Living in Fear of It Edward I. Koch's choice of a final resting place did not thrill Richard J. Moylan. It was an understandable reaction. After all, Mr. Moylan is president of historic Green-Wood Cemetery, which is in Brooklyn, and the former mayor had practically shouted his refusal to go through eternity anywhere but in Manhattan. Long before his death in February at age 88, he let it be known that he had bought a burial plot in Trinity Church Cemetery in Washington Heights. "He wanted to be in Manhattan, which I understood," said Mr. Moylan, who has guided Green-Wood and its 478 acres, 130 employees and roughly 560,000 souls since Mr. Koch's third term, in the second half of the 1980s. "But as the mayor of New York City," he said, "it should not have mattered. It was his beloved Manhattan. And that troubled me a little because, you know, Brooklynites have that little inferiority complex. No hard feelings, though. "The nice thing," Mr. Moylan said over lunch at the cemetery, "was that he brought attention to being memorialized." Five years ago, Mr. Koch even discussed his burial plans at a gathering of the New York State Association of Cemeteries. Notwithstanding the topic, Mr. Moylan said, it was not a grave occasion. Green-Wood, still recovering from serious damage inflicted by Hurricane Sandy, may not have snagged Mr. Koch, but it does not lack for New York mayors. It is home to at least 10 of them, including DeWitt Clinton, Seth Low and William J. Gaynor. Not to mention that across its 175 years, the cemetery has played permanent host to a long roster of the celebrated and the notorious, and many thousands in between, including about 60 people killed in the Sept. One Green-Wood notable is about to have his annual visit from afar. That would be Townsend Harris, who in 1847 founded an academy that later became City College of New York. He was the first American consul-general in Japan after that country ended more than two centuries of self-imposed isolation. Harris plunked himself down in Shimoda, southwest of Tokyo on the Izu Peninsula. Every summer, pilgrims from Shimoda journey to Green-Wood to pay homage to him on the grassy knoll where he has lain since 1878. They have done this for all but one of the last 28 years - there was a scheduling conflict in 2005 - and the 2013 delegation is expected this week. It is a remarkable display of fidelity. If any other historical figure at Green-Wood has so loyal a following, Mr. Moylan said, "we're not aware" of it. Lunch with him was not the easiest proposition. Dining outdoors on the cemetery grounds would have been pleasant, but picnicking is not encouraged, he said. And the surrounding neighborhood is not exactly awash in tempting restaurants. We settled for a small, comfortable dining room above the offices near Green-Wood's arched main entrance. Lunch consisted of takeout pizza - half regular, half extra cheese - delivered from Luigi's, nearby on Fifth Avenue. The fanciest part of the meal was the water: San Pellegrino. Mr. Moylan, 58, was born into the cemetery business. His father, Joseph Moylan, installed monuments at Green-Wood. As a teenager, the son worked part time on the grounds as a landscaper (never actually digging a grave, he said). He rose through the ranks to become president. Joseph Moylan is buried there. Eleanor Moylan, divorced from him in life, is next to him in death. Her brother and her mother lie not far away. The interviewer went for the obvious: "I guess the inevitable question - " He did not get to finish. Mr. Moylan broke in with a slight sigh. "Yeah," he said. I'll be here, too, I guess. He predicted that so will his wife, Gloria, a public-school teacher. They live in Park Slope, Brooklyn. "It was pretty much all I knew," he said of growing up at Green-Wood. Coming here as a kid. Going to other cemeteries as a kid. It was natural. I didn't think about it as a place where people were buried. It was: "Gee, what a nice lake!" " Years spent in a graveyard might inspire one to reflect deeply on death: Where indeed is its sting? Should it really be not proud? Is truly no man an island? Might it in fact be O.K. to go gentle into that good night? But for Mr. Moylan, the afterlife is not even an afterthought. "When you're gone, you're gone," he said, adding this about death: