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Letter to the editor

Music teacher's life turned on her belief in miracles

By Stephanie Hayes, Times Staff Writer
Published February 15, 2008

ADVERTISEMENT Emilia Cara Cushing, 86, graduated from the Juilliard School, performed at Carnegie Hall and toured through Europe, Canada and the United States. She died Saturday after a battle with cancer. [Family photo]

CLEARWATER - The night of her miracle, Emilia Cara Cushing sat at the piano and played for six hours straight. She sobbed.

It was 1982. Her right hand had been paralyzed. Doctors didn't know why. The lifelong concert pianist could barely play.

Her heart hurt, too. Her husband and parents had just died. And she had fallen and broken her good hand.

"I found myself calling out and praying," she told the St. Petersburg Times that year. "I kept going to the piano and trying to play."

Suddenly, the pain stopped. Her fingers started moving.

* * *

She was never a low achiever. It wasn't her family's way.

Mrs. Cushing's father, Anthony, was a trumpeter in Italy who played for Arturo Toscanini. He came to New York to play in Toscanini's orchestra, said Mrs. Cushing's brother, Edgardo de Bernardo.

Like her father, Mrs. Cushing was studious. She graduated from the Juilliard School, where she studied under Paul Wittgenstein, a famous pianist who lost the use of his right arm in World War I.

She performed at Carnegie Hall and toured through Europe, Canada and the United States. She sang, too, in seven languages.

Her husband, Lawrence Cushing, was a Harvard graduate and member of Mensa. In 1969, they moved to Florida, where Mrs. Cushing began teaching piano and voice. At times, she was demanding.

"She expected you to learn," said Doris Miller, one of Mrs. Cushing's voice students. "She just expected the best out of you because she gave the best."

Mrs. Cushing was posh and elegant. She draped her Clearwater home with paintings and sculpture. She had a dry wit and a short fuse.

"I have an angel's heart and a devil's temperament," she would tell students.

She earned respect. Even after three decades, Miller called her "Madame."

* * *

Mrs. Cushing regularly testified about her hand to women's groups. And, she told them, God healed a parasite in her ear and a problem with her eyes.

She became an ordained minister and prayed over the sick at hospitals. Before each dinner, her brother said, she prayed for people and animals.

Mrs. Cushing died Saturday after a battle with cancer. She was 86.

Until the end, she believed in miracles. In the two months before her death, she never turned on the television, Miller said. Instead, she prayed for a list of 25 people.

One of those people was Miller's sister-in-law. She was near death with cancer under hospice care, Miller said. But now, she's home and feeling better.

Stephanie Hayes can be reached at shayes@sptimes.com or 727 893-8857.

Biography

Emilia Cara Cushing

Born: June 18, 1921.

Died: Feb. 9, 2008.

Survivors: brother, Edgardo de Bernardo.

Service: 2:30 p.m. Thursday at 2616 Barksdale Court, Clearwater.

[Last modified February 14, 2008, 22:22:26]