Marlena Gershowitz, wife of Gershow Recycling CEO, dies at 79

Her husband was the CEO of Gershow Recycling, but Marlena Gershowitz was the CEO of the family, tying together the bonds of four generations, her loved ones said.

As a mother of three and grandmother of 13, she bestowed on common family moments, such as the reading of school report cards, the importance of the Super Bowl. Like a professional events planner, she could organize all the family vacations, special days and holiday parties. She had the knack of reading people, knowing when to put her foot down and when to let advice sink in.

"She knew how to make everybody get along," said son Kevin Gershowitz of Melville. "My mother was selfless to a fault. She worried about everyone, and as the family grew, she managed somehow to spread her wings and cover everyone ... That's the magic she had and now we have to figure out how to do it on our own."

On Sept. 26, the Southampton resident died of lung cancer that had already spread when it was diagnosed in April. She was 79.

Marlena Gershowitz was the strongest one in the clan, those who knew her said, and even in a wheelchair in her final months, she insisted on continuing a decadeslong custom with her husband, Sam Gershowitz.

"Every morning, she had to walk me to the garage and kiss me goodbye," said her husband.

How the couple met turned into the stuff of family lore long ago.

In 1966, at a Manhattan club called Mister Laffs, Sam Gershowitz spotted the beautiful brunette with her girlfriends. He bought them drinks and afterward walked the women to their car, where he kissed Marlena and was slapped. Marlena told him, "you're disgusting," her husband recalled, but after one phone call, he was picking her up all summer in his white Cadillac convertible.

Theirs was a story of opposites. She was a Queens public school teacher who came from a college-educated family that had traveled around the world. He was a high school dropout, a fledgling scrap recycler who, as the family joke went, traveled between Brooklyn and Queens.

But Marlena's mother saw future success in Sam Gershowitz and even loaned him $7,500 to expand his recycling business.

The couple were married a few months later, in January 1967. She quit teaching to be a mother, with twin boys at the end of the year, then a daughter in 1972.

While the couple headed separate worlds, she helped turn Gershow Recycling into a success, the family said. She gave her husband the confidence to trust his instincts on big decisions, like the purchase of a $30,000 car-flattening machine the year after they married. Those many nights he had to work close to midnight, she never protested, only saying she would warm up his dinner when he came home.

"She thought I could walk on water, and I thought the same of her," her husband said.

The importance of family relationships had been cemented when her father, Herman Lederman, died when she was about 12, those who knew her said. Lederman was a bridal gown maker who proudly brought home luxuries of their era, such as fresh fruit, and his death left his wife, Jeanne, a public school teacher, a lifelong single parent of two.

That loss at a young age was the reason Marlena Gershowitz as the matriarch repeatedly stressed "the family must stick together" and "don't win the battle and lose the war." When he was in college, Kevin Gershowitz recalled, his mother ordered him to make peace after a major fight with his roommate, saying "this is going to be your friend for life." The son said he was forever grateful for that advice because he met his future wife through that roommate.

As Gershow Recycling grew, so did the family's wealth, but its matriarch kept her humbleness and focus on family, even with the bigger and better homes they moved into, all the yachts her husband named after her and the purchase this summer of the newly named Marlena Yacht Club in Montauk.

Reflecting the "heart of gold" that her husband noticed early on, Marlena Gershowitz gave thousands of dollars to friends in need, adopted dogs and pursued her passion for interior design by decorating family members' homes. She volunteered with the Southampton Jewish Center and, along with her husband, was honored for their largesse to community groups.

"She had class," said Ruth Schwartz of Manhattan, a best friend since their childhood days as neighbors. "She was a really kind, wonderful person. She never criticized me."

During the worst of the pandemic, Marlena and Sam Gershowitz shut themselves in their home for four months, binge-watching Netflix into the early morning hours in the den, which she recently finished decorating.

"We learned we needed each other more," Sam Gershowitz said.

Besides her husband and son, Marlena Gershowitz is survived by son Elliot of Melville, daughter Pamela Abrams of Dix Hills and brother Ted Lederman of East Hampton.

She was buried at Wellwood Cemetery in Pinelawn.