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Saturday, September 09, 2006

A September 11, 2001 Tribute

Marina R. Gertsberg

"That day she had to go to school and that's why she was early." Roman Gertsberg, Ground Zero, 9-11-2002


On Tuesday September 4, 2001, Marina Gertsberg walked into 1 World Trade Center, and rode the elevator up to the 101st floor to start her new job as a Junior Manager at Cantor Fitzgerals. She had left her old job at Morgan Stanley because she was beginning a graduate program at Baruch College.

Four days later, September 8, she glided down the aisle of a church in Brooklyn in an elegant purple dress as maid of honor for her best friend Clara's wedding. Then she danced the night away.

At 10:00 pm Monday, September 10, Marina called her parents from her Brooklyn apartment to tell them that she was home for the night, she was safe, and to wish them a good night, as she did several times a week.

She had a day full of work and school ahead of her, so she decided to get an early start on Tuesday morning.

Marina Romanova Gertsberg was 25 years old on September 11, 2001. She was beautiful, intelligent, and funny. She had gorgeous, baby-blue eyes that seemed bottomless, through which shone her soul. She had a contagious, engaging smile that translated into the way she lived her life: with zest, confidence, adventure, wit, and love.

She graduated with honors from a school for the gifted, and from Stuyvesant High School, and for college from SUNY Binghamton. She learned Hebrew because she wanted to study in Israel. She wanted to visit her birthplace, the city of Odessa in the Ukraine (Her family emigrated to the U.S. when she was four years old). She learned Russian so she could speak to her grandparents in their native language. She was seeing a young man who had every chance of one day being her husband.

She was her parents' only child.

Marina is loved and remembered and missed by everyone who knew her, because of her sunny personality, goodness and strength of character, and her love of life. The world is richer because she existed.

"We see her in dreams. We talk to her. Usually when a person have a dream, they wake up and say, you know, thank God it was a dream, but we have opposite thing. We don't want to wake up." Anna Gertsberg, Ground Zero, 9-11-2002

To her friends and loved ones: Remember that a life lived fully and well, as Marina's was, though brief, is not wasted but is a precious gift.