103334

Sunbathing, Then Diving In

William Bratton Jr. and his wife, Mary Bratton, reminisced about their daughter Michelle Renee Bratton, who started working Aug. 6 as an executive assistant at eSpeed, a division of Cantor Fitzgerald.

"She was a big fan of Madonna," Mr. Bratton said. "I remember in August she drove down to Washington, D.C., for a Madonna concert."

His wife continued. "She called us in the middle of the concert, held the phone up and said, `Listen to this!' "

Ms. Bratton dived competitively in college, worked as a lifeguard and was a "sun goddess," her mother said. And "a pretty good shopper, too," her father said.

At the State University of New York College at Oswego, she belonged to the Sigma Delta Tau sorority. "She would mentor new sorority people, get them ready for rush, and keep them strong," Mrs. Bratton said. "She would always be the one behind them giving them that extra push."

She loved working in the city, that life-at-your-fingertips feeling it brings, her mother said: "Every single day, she went from dawn till dusk. When she did take time off, she would sleep for 15 hours. You couldn't wake her up."

Ms. Bratton, who shared an apartment with her sister in Yonkers, planned to get a master's degree so she could become a teacher and a diving coach. She was 23.

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on March 24, 2002.