Eva
Cassidy

von Johannsen am 07.11.2023 - 14:56 Uhr | melden

Many of you are familiar with the music of Eva Cassidy, who
died of cancer in November of 1996. At the time she died, she
was just making a name for herself in the Washington area,
having completed a CD with Chuck Brown, and a concert
CD, “Live at Blues Alley.” Her music has grown in popularity.
Listeners of the BBC included her version of “Somewhere Over
the Rainbow” among the 100 best songs of the 20th century,
and Amazon.com recently reported that Eva’s CD’s are their
overall number 5 best seller in music for the last 10 years.
Few of you know that Eva Cassidy worked full or part-time
at Behnke Nurseries for fourteen years at our Largo, Maryland
nursery, between 1981 and 1995. With the sale of the Largo
property and the move of the greenhouses to Lothian this year,
it seems like a good time to recollect Eva’s years at Largo.
When I started at Largo in 1984, Eva worked for the “Growing” department, as a transplanter. She performed general
greenhouse work; watering, transplanting seedlings; pinching
and tying poinsettias, and all of the other various things that
greenhouse staff do. My recollection is that she was a petite
blonde, very quiet and shy, and very hard working. Eva’s sister
Anette, was also working part-time at the nursery while she
completed a nursing degree, and her mother Barbara divided
her time between transplanting at
Largo and working in the Christmas Shop at Beltsville.
Eventually, Eva transferred to
the Woody Plants production
department (the first woman on
the crew), which gave her a chance
to work outside and get more
exercise. In those days, our peat
moss came in 6 cubic foot bales,
loose on a semi. They were
unloaded by hand, and stacked in
a warehouse. We looked like a
bunch of ants. Including Ant One,
me, muttering to myself and dragging a bale, and Ant Two, Eva, with
a bale of peat as big as she, balanced on her shoulder, climbing
up a mountain of bales. She was only 5’ 2”, but loaded truckloads of trees right alongside the guys.
In addition to toughening up physically, I think being the
only woman on a crew of nurserymen toughened her up
mentally as well, and perhaps gave her more confidence to
perform. (How much worse could an audience be?) Nursery
work is hard and dirty, and not particularly glamorous. It
includes a lot of potting, watering, weeding, and moving heavy
plants around, in all weather. An excellent incentive to further
develop talents like singing!
Her supervisor, Dave Nizinski, gave her some additional
duties, including woody plant propagation. She made a lot of
cuttings, especially leyland cypress.
Many of you have plants in your
gardens that were originally produced by Eva.
After her initial cancer surgery,
she made an effort to stay covered
up while in the sun, and did more
indoor work. She did some data entry (computers were definitely not
her first love) and I remember
many a conversation with Eva that
included the question: “Did you
remember to log in?” She also used
her artistic talents to make some
of the signs we had around the
nursery.
As she became busier as a musician, she moved to a parttime position at the nursery, and eventually, she left to devote
herself full-time to her career. It was only a few months before
the cancer reappeared, and she died just as she was becoming
a “name” in the Washington music scene. There are still a few
of us “old timers” here who worked with Eva Cassidy.
Whenever I hear one of her songs, I think of the young woman
transplanting in the greenhouse, and I feel so very sad.

The Behnke GardeNews - Holiday 2005
by Larry Hurley, Perennial Specialist