Marsha Gail Freeman passed away at 3:00 a.m. on September 20 at Lansdowne Hospital in Virginia's Loudoun County. She was 76 years old.

Marsha was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and grew up in Queens. She attended Queens College and Columbia University's Teachers College, where she received a masters degree in education. While she did teach for a time at a school in inner-city Detroit, her interests took her into the area of aerospace. She joined the Fusion Energy Foundation, a scientific organization founded in the 1970s by economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche to promote the development of fusion energy. Writing perhaps hundreds of articles in Fusion Magazine and 21st Century Science and Technology magazine and Executive Intelligence Review, where she became the technology editor, she also wrote three books: "How We Got to the Moon, the Story of the German Space Pioneers"; "Challenges of Human Space Exploration," about the scientific work done by Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts on the Russian Mir space station, a predecessor to the ISS; and "Krafft Ehricke's Extraterrestrial Imperative," reviving the work of one of the most creative and imaginative of the German space engineers, who came to the U.S. after the Second World War -- also a dear friend of Marsha's, who died in his sixties in 1985.

Marsha was a highly rigorous thinker, but also a "gentle soul" with an infectious smile. Even people who knew her only briefly were impressed with her knowledge and great acumen. Brian Harvey, a prolific Irish space historian, with many books to his name, dubbed Marsha "the queen of space history." One should remember that when she started writing about space, there were hardly any women involved in the genre. When giving tours as an accredited Washington tour guide to school kids at the Air and Space Museum in Washington, Marsha always told the girls, who were not always as excited about space as the boys were, that space was "gender-neutral." Marsha was also privileged to attend the ceremony at the White House when Eileen Collins, the first woman to command the Space Shuttle, was presented to President Clinton.

Marsha attended the first Space Shuttle launch in 1981 and interviewed the pilot, Robert Crippen. From 1992, she was also a very active member of the International Astronautical Federation's History Committee, writing for them and speaking at their annual congresses and helping edit their annual journals. She had a wry sense of humor and a sharp Jewish wit, and would often crack people up with her sudden comments.

She inherited a deep love of science and a keen sense of criticism from her father, Joseph Osofsky, a World War II veteran, who had only a high school education, but through night courses and work on the DEW line, became the veritable "Mr. Wizard" of his Queens neighborhood, capable of resolving most of the neighbors' technical and electrical problems, which they didn't seem to manage themselves. Many of the kids in the neighborhood who spent time in Joey Osofsky's work shop went on to careers as nuclear physicists at MIT and other prestigious schools. His only daughter, Marsha, was the apple of his eye.

Marsha made major contributions to Fusion magazine, to 21st Century Science & Technology magazine and to Executive Intelligence Review as well as working on various aspects of Lyndon LaRouche's 1988 presidential electoral program on space, "The Woman on Mars." She is survived by William Jones, her husband and constant companion for nearly three decades.

Family will receive friends on Thursday, September 28, 2023, from 10:00 am to 11:00 am at Colonial Funeral Home of Leesburg, 201 Edwards Ferry Rd., NE., Leesburg, VA  20176 where a service will begin at 11:00 am.  Interment to follow at Union Cemetery, King St., Leesburg, VA  20176.