ALEX BRAGINSKY: With Artful
Touches
You
could set your watch by Alex Braginsky. And woe to the
boss or relative who let dust accumulate on their
computer screens: they got scolded. Having moved to
Queens from the Soviet Union in 1979 with virtually
nothing, he felt anyone fortunate enough to have
state-of-the-art computers had better take care of
them.
Mr. Braginsky, 38, was a man who picked up his shirts
at the dry cleaner and, before going to work at Reuters,
re-ironed them if he noticed wrinkles. A perfectionist
but not a prima donna, he would pull over to help if he
passed a motorist with car trouble. When he traveled in
Europe with his girlfriend, complete strangers would stop
him on the street and ask for directions: even in foreign
countries, he projected the savoir-faire of a fellow who
knew where he was headed.
He rode a motorcycle and filled his kitchen in
Stamford, Conn., with topnotch cookware. "A three hundred
dollar set of knives," marveled his mother, Nelly. "I'd
tell him, for that much, a knife should work by itself.
When Alex cooked, it was like art on your plate." He was
doing a colleague a favor and filling in at a meeting at
Windows on the World on Sept. 11th.
.