My mother, Adina Ferri, who passed away on May 28, 2009, was an exemplary person who lived her life demonstrating a high standard of personal values, traditions, and decency.

Her 80-year life journey began as a young girl in Canosa Sannita, a small town in Italy; matured as a teenager who spent 18 months in a concentration camp during World War II in Northern Italy; and culminated with her life as a proud, naturalized American citizen.

As a young girl, she and her family lived off the land in what we now consider a very organic, holistic, largely plant-based culture in harmony with nature.  They cultivated linen from seed, worked it into thread, and used it to embroider fabrics.  Their wheat crop was milled into flour for breads and pasta.  And their harvest of beans, grapes, olives, and fruits fed a large family and enabled them to buy salt, sugar, and other commodities they couldn’t grow.

In her small, Adriatic coastal town, my mother was part of a very strong community where neighbors went in and out of each other’s houses as if they were family.  They borrowed each other’s pots and pans, and shared charcoal, cooking oil, and baked goods.   Everyone looked out for everyone else, and unfortunately gossiped about everyone else—but the communication was all face-to-face and word-of-mouth.

When bombs were falling on their small town during World War II, they didn’t have the AP or CNN to tell her how the war was going.  They saw German soldiers running roughshod through their town, and later watched them run away in fear as American tanks bearing Red Cross banners rolled along, signaling the end of the War.

In her lifetime, my mother developed strong interpersonal skills in dealing with people, and upheld her generation’s affinity for visiting with relatives and friends.  If she didn’t hear from someone in awhile, she wouldn’t hesitate to pick up the phone and call them.  Because she valued people and personal relationships, she cautioned me not to carry grudges, judge people’s motives, or burn bridges.

In the years before she died, the world had changed dramatically.  She could watch RAI, Italian public TV, 24 hours a day on cable; and a world of news, communications, and services were also readily available on her daughter’s PC and BlackBerry.  She relished telling everyone she knew how she found great recipes or shopped with incredible convenience on “The Internet.”  She didn’t understand what the Internet was, but fell in love with what it could do.

In stark contrast to her background, her grandchildren’s interpersonal relationships were not fueled by Afternoon Coffees, but rather by texting, Tweeting, and “friending” people on Face Book.   In their online world, news is instantaneous, multifaceted, and emanates from different sources worldwide.

While their way of communicating isn’t face to face as it was in my mother’s day, they’re able to rapidly blast their thoughts to everyone and anyone in the world.  But in this electronic world, their generation is losing the interpersonal skills and energy exchange my mother’s generation derived from being part of a close-knit community.