Warren Massey was mowing the grass last week along Cherry Street despite a hurting back. Everything grows fast once spring begins to roll, and Warren and his sister, Barbara Massey Mapps, have their own unwritten startup point for landscaping that is both joy and statement:
The length of the grass. The blooms emerging in the gardens. Young trees they planted, finally in bud.
Yet they were missing someone, even as they followed that routine. Their sister, Kat Massey, was always at the center of the effort. Warren and Barbara, 65, in a pause from bagging litter, spoke of their older sister as a living presence:
“I’ve got Kat with me,” Warren said, nodding toward a photo dangling from the mirror in his car, Kat with that sunrise smile that could win new allies by itself.
Her siblings picture her in the “Inspiration Garden,” a triangle near a piece of Virginia Street – now Kat Massey Way – that the family has helped keep in leaf and flower long after old buildings there were brought to rubble.
Kat sported a big-brimmed hat offering protection from the sun as she worked for hours on hands and knees. She did it that way for as long as they remember, back to when the Kensington Expressway was carved into their lives, just beyond their front yard.
The family hardware stores, groceries and pharmacies near their block gradually closed or moved away. The Masseys stayed. As the children grew up and turned into adults, they kept their parents’ home and bought houses of their own.
When springtime came, for decades, they beautified the street together.
Two of the five siblings – Robert Jr. and Patti – died within a year of each other more than a decade ago, and the work became one way of remembering them. Twelve months ago this weekend, on a beautiful May day, the family had again started that spring tradition:
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