Martha Stewart’s Mom Dies

Monday, November 19, 2007

Martha Kostyra, the 93 year-old mom of Martha Stewart died November 16 at a hospital near her home in Weston, Ct. at Norwalk Hospital, according to Access Hollywood. Stewart always referred to her mom as her mentor and taught the household diva cooking and decorating.

Kostyra and her husband, the late Edward Kostyra raised Martha and five siblings in Nutley, N.J. where, according to Martha, she learned many tricks that she turned into a multi-million dollar company with a popular magazine, her company going public and applying her tips to television viewers everywhere. Everyone everywhere was saying “It’s a good thing.”

Mother and daughter appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live in December of 2003 where mom stated that she was very proud of her daughter’s accomplishments.

Martha Stewart moved out of her colonial-era estate in Westport recently and moved to Katonah, N.Y., which is about 20 miles away. She has raised controversy there as she did in Westport, Ct. in that Stewart wanted to market the name of Katonah for one of her products.

It wasn’t that long ago, where the ex stock broker got into legal trouble for what some people thought to be insider trading when she sold her stock in ImClone Systems, a cancer medication that tanked the day before she sold it in December 2001.

Stewart agreed to pay $45,673, the amount of losses she avoided due to her insider trading plus $12,389 in interest. The bulk of the payment comes from the maximum civil penalty of $137,019 or three times the amount of losses avoided. She also completed a five-month prison term in March 2005 for lying to federal investigators about why she made the stock sale.

The Food and Drug Administration announced it declined to review ImClone’s application for the cancer drug Erbitux and the stock fell 16 percent. Stewart sold the stock a day before the FDA announced the decision.