I first met Lucia when I moved to Pasadena in March, 2009.  It was my first day at Naked Juice and she popped her head into my office and introduced herself.  For those of you that have moved as a single person, you know how hard it is to start your personal life over in a new location.  But not with Lucia around… she made my move really easy.  And I’m not just talking about that weekend she spent helping me unpack my kitchen.  I’m talking about the rare experience of meeting someone really special, that you know is going to be a lifelong friend.  And I can honestly say that I am a better person for having known Lucia. 

There are several life lessons that I learned from her.  Live life fully.  Take time to recharge.  Be authentic.  And above all, cherish your relationships.  

Live Life Fully.  Lucia worked hard and she played hard.  She tackled life head on, moving to the US to further her education, and ultimately rising to a PepsiCo VP.  While in California, she became a US citizen, of which she was very proud.  She was fortunate to travel with work, and always took advantage of her trips to see the sights.  And she loved weekend getaways.  I will always remember the fun we had at the annual cheese festival in Sonoma.

She was committed to exercise. She liked going to the gym and doing barre.  We went to our first Zumba class together in 2010 and loved it.  She also loved hiking and being outdoors. 

Even when she wasn’t anyplace special, Lucia was always looking for things to do.  I can’t even begin to count the number of times that she called me saying “Here’s the plan”, with a detailed game plan for how we were going to spend the day. 

On the flip side, Lucia also knew when to Take Time to Recharge.   As hard as Lucia worked and as much as she seemed to be on the go, she definitely needed her down time.  Some of my favorite memories are the nights we spent just talking over hummus, wine and cheese.  She had many interests, including reading, listening to music, gardening, and nurturing her plants.  She loved to sit outside with her early morning coffee. She loved reading cookbooks even though she was an exceptional cook without using a recipe.  We spent so much time at the Le Creuset cookware store that when she moved to New York, her CA friends and I bought her their cookbook and the store manager signed it with a personal note saying she would be missed.  She always had one or more projects, like needlepoint, quilting, or trying to grow “Fred the Bread” from sourdough starter.  And we had so much fun putting her crafting skills to use making the favors for my wedding, which she was in.  And finally, she even loved ironing, and to this day is the only person I have ever seen successfully fold a fitted sheet. 

To know Lucia was to love her.  She always knew how to Be Authentic.    

It was very easy to know what she liked and what she didn’t.  She had special words for the things she liked… a pot may be “a beauty”, a purse “so cute”, a bracelet “so sparkly” and her favorite plants all had names like “Hairy or Furry”.  She even embraced the rapper name I gave her, Creepy P, which was loosely based on a children’s book character.

She was unapologetic about her pet peeves, which included bad grammar (misuse of to/two/too or their and there), overtalkative Uber drivers, being cold, and what she would call overall stupidity.  

And she didn’t approve of how Frank and I take care of our plants.  We always knew that when she came over, she was going to “give the plants a haircut”, as she called it.  The last time we saw her was last Thanksgiving at our house here in South Carolina.  And she did her usual routine – gave the plants a haircut and put the trimmings in a glass of water to grow roots.  I am ashamed to say that we didn’t get around to actually planting the trimmings until about two months ago.  And now I am really glad that we resisted the temptation to just throw them away and instead put them in a pot she had given us long ago.

And the final lesson, Cherish Your Relationships.  Lucia loved her family.  She always looked forward to her trips home to Italy.  She fiercely missed her mom, brother, sister and brother-in-law, and her nephews, who she affectionately referred to as 1, 2, and 3.  In fact, one of her reasons for wanting to move from California back to New York was to be closer to her family.  She was still far away, but definitely closer.  And as a side note, while I was initially sad to see her move to New York, I was very happy when I was transferred to New York several months later.  And Lucia graciously invited me and my cat Bunny to stay with her until I could move into my house there.

While Lucia lived a life of many chapters, she never left friends behind.  Instead, she generously shared her old friends with new friends.  Through Lucia I met several members of her family – Daniela, Carlo, and nephews 1 and 2 in Sleepy Hollow, and enjoyed watching her brother’s band perform in Niagara Falls.  I spent Thanksgiving and Easters with her UMass friends aka “Giancarlo and The Italians”, met Beth for the first time during a girls weekend in Hawaii, and established friendships with her friends from Watson, her CA condo complex, and her new friends from PepsiCo R&D.  It’s hard to explain how good Lucia was at keeping relationships, but she worked hard at it, and she was the best.  Whenever she brought friends together, we had already heard so much about each other that there were instant connections.  In fact, many of us have grown closer as we have grieved together over the last few weeks.  And we often comment that this is yet another gift that Lucia has given us.

Lucia is gone way too soon.  She still had many laughs, adventures and successes ahead.  But she will live on in our memories, and through the life lessons she has taught us.  She leaves us with a widened network of friends, and for me she also lives on in my Lucia plant – that we will do our best to care for and make sure that it always has a proper haircut.  Rest in peace, Creepy P.  

(In inglese con traduzione italiana sotto).

I met Lucia in Amherst during our years of study at the University of Massachusetts. We did not meet immediately, because we were in separate degree programs, but one day she came into my life in a memorable way. It was probably the winter of 1995 and I was in this house helping my then girlfriend moving out because a new tenant, Lucia, was coming.

I remember that day watching in amusement the arrival of this young woman, this beautiful and petite woman, who was skillfully supervising and giving out order to a bunch of friends who helped her moving in. Probably they were friends from the Food Science Department or the Graduate Longue at UMass were she used to hang out.

I remember thinking to myself: "Hmmm, maybe today it is not the right time for me to tell her that I'm also Italian … there is a risk that she will put me to work as well". Needless to say, that day I ended up doing double work; helped my friend to move out and then got aggregated to Lucia's group of helpers. Little I knew that she would become a lifelong friend.

Thinking back to that episode, it is not surprising that she would became a top manager in a company like PepsiCo. Lucia was very talented and very good at taking out the best from the people around her.

Our friendship got strengthen with the many dinners and activities with the community of Italian students and our UMass common friends. Indeed, through Lucia I met many people, including my partner Elena, Giancarlo, Barbara and many others.

We continued to be friend beyond the university years. Around the time Lucia started working at Watson food in Connecticut, I moved to Woods Hole, Massachusetts, working with the US Geological Survey, and together we spent many week ends biking around Cape Cod and islands. Similarly, not too long after she moved to New Jersey to work with National Starch, I moved to Bayville, New York, to start teaching at Long Island University. The mighty queue of the Verrazano and the Goethals bridges were not enough of a barrier to prevent us to keep organizing week end getaways. The years at Princeton have been fantastic and so important in Lucia’s life because she met Beth. They were inseparable. I remember fondly their Bucia’s (Beth and Lucia) bakery project.

Among the many sweet memories of Lucia is the time we spent together at the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York), and her teasing me about the fact that I loved the MET Museum because I had a crash on Madame X (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/12127). The MET will not be the same the next time I will go.

It was precious and very nice to have been a part of Lucia's journey and it is really difficult for me to accept that she is no longer with us physically. But I am convinced that wherever she is right now, she is already managing whoever is around her, maybe some angels, and probably already in charge of the moving operations of this new journey of hers.

I miss you so much Lucia… and I would do everything to go back to that winter of 1995 in that house in Amherst where I met you first… and this time I would move all your furniture and stuff by myself without complaining.

--

Ho conosciuto Lucia ad Amherst durante i nostri comuni anni di studio all'Università del Massachusetts (UMass). Non ci siamo incontrati subito, poiché eravamo in corsi di studio diversi, ma un giorno lei è entrata nella mia vita in modo memorabile.

Probabilmente era l'inverno del 1995 ed ero in questa casa ad aiutare la mia ragazza di allora a trasferirsi perché stava arrivando una nuova inquilina, Lucia. Ricordo ancora che quel giorno stavo guardando divertito l'arrivo di questa giovane donna, bella e minuta, abilmente al comando di questo gruppo di di amici che la stavano aiutavano nel trasloco. Probabilmente erano i suoi amici del Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Alimentazione o della Graduate Longue di UMass dove Lucia amava passare del tempo.

Ricordo di aver pensato tra me e me: "Hmmm, forse oggi non è il momento giusto per dirle che sono italiano anche io… c'è il rischio che questa metta a lavorare anche me ". Inutile dire che quel giorno ho fatto doppio lavoro; ho aiutato la mia amica a portar fuori le sue cose per poi essere aggregato al gruppo di aiutanti di Lucia. Non sapevo che era l’inizio di un'amicia per tutta la vita.

Ripensando a quell'episodio, non mi sorprende affatto che Lucia sia poi diventata un top manager in un'azienda come PepsiCo; ella aveva talento ed era molto brava a tirare fuori il meglio dalle persone intorno a lei.

La nostra amicizia si è rafforzata con le tante cene e le varie attività con la comunità di studenti italiani e altri amici comuni di UMass. Attraverso Lucia ho conosciuto tante persone, tra cui la mia compagna Elena, Giancarlo, Barbara e tanti altri.

Lucia ed io abbiamo continuato a essere amici oltre gli anni dell'università. Nel periodo in cui ella iniziò a lavorare alla Watson Food nel Connecticut, io mi trasferii a Woods Hole, nel Massachusetts, lavorando con il Servizio Geologico degli Stati Uniti (USGS) e insieme abbiamo passato molti fine settimana girando Cape Cod in bici. Allo stesso modo, non molto tempo dopo che Lucia si trasferì in New Jersey per lavorare alla National Starch, io mi trasferii a Bayville in New York, per iniziare a insegnare alla Long Island University. Le interminabili code dei ponti Verrazano e Goethals non riuscìrono ad essere barriera sufficiente per impedirci di continuare a organizzare molti fine settimana insieme. Gli anni a Princeton furono fantastici e così importanti nella vita di Lucia in quanto li incontrò Beth. Erano inseparabili e ricordo con affetto il loro progetto della panetteria/pasticcieria Bucia’s (Beth e Lucia).

Tra i tanti miei bei ricordi di Lucia c'è il (tanto) tempo trascorso insieme al MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art di New York) ed il suo prendermi in giro sul fatto che amavo molto andare al MET Museum poiché (secondo lei) avevo una infatuazione di Madame X (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/12127). Per me Il MET non sarà lo stesso senza Lucia.

È stato prezioso e molto bello aver percorso un po' di strada insieme a Lucia ed è davvero difficile per me accettare il fatto che ella non sia più con noi fisicamente. Sono tuttavia convinto che ovunque sia in questo momento, Lucia starà gestendo chi le sta intorno, forse alcuni angeli, ed energicamente dirigendo le operazioni di trasloco per questo suo nuovo viaggio.

Mi manchi tantissimo Lucia… e credimi farei di tutto per tornare a quell'inverno del 1995, in quella casa di Amherst dove ti ho incontrato per la prima volta… e questa volta sposterei da solo le tue cose ed i tuoi mobili … e senza un minimo lamento.