Marina Gertsberg: Pride of Her
Parents
Marina
Gertsberg's father did not want to serve with the Soviet
forces in Afghanistan, so when she was 4, the family
emigrated from Odessa, Ukraine, and settled in the Howard
Beach section of Queens.
Bright and athletic, Ms. Gertsberg was everything her
parents, Roman and Anna, could have hoped for in their
only child. She went to the Mark Twain School for the
Gifted and Talented, Stuyvesant High School and the State
University of New York at Binghamton. She kept up with
her Russian so she could write to her grandmother. She
had her own apartment in Brooklyn, but talked with her
mother several times a day. She and her boyfriend, Henry
Kravchenko, seemed headed toward marriage.
This fall, Ms. Gertsberg, 25, enrolled in a master's
program at Baruch College and had to switch jobs because
her employer would not adjust her schedule to accommodate
her classes. On Sept. 4, she joined Cantor Fitzgerald as
a junior manager.
Four days later, Ms. Gertsberg was maid of honor at
her friend Clara Mazepa's wedding in Brooklyn, walking
down the aisle in a purple gown that set off her blue
eyes. "She was like a queen," her mother said.
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