Marsha remembers: "When I was a kid, Grammy always took me to all kinds of wonderful places. Grammy didn’t care if it was the Jewish holidays; if you wanted pastries, she would take you to the place on 72nd Street. She would take me to my favorite shows at Radio City Music Hall. Later on, if I wanted to have a date with a boyfriend in the City, she would let me stay over at her place."

That would have been the apartment at 5 Riverside Drive that Selma inherited from Dr. Prager, where she would reside the rest of her life.

For her part, Selma Ruby responded to the tragedy of her husband’s death by continuing to give love—especially to the grandchildren who would begin arriving within about a half decade of Walter’s death.

Walter, Dan, and Joanne Ruby remember Selma with great fondness, but they lived at a geographical distance from her in Pittsburgh and Chicago, and saw her only once a year or less.

It should be acknowledged that we have, at this point, no proof that the Gonif actually existed or that he was in fact the son of the Kovno Rav. If the Rav indeed married as early as 1830, he could certainly have had a son who would have been around 20 at the time of the Crimean War. According to Zalman Alpert, if such a wayward son in fact existed, Rabbi Spektor would likely have preferred not to acknowledge his paternity in the respectable world of Russian Jewry.

They say the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, but this crab apple landed in a whole different district.