In her extraordinary career as a college educator and administrator in Boston and West Virginia, and her incomparable encounters with Island residents at her retirement home in Oak Bluffs, Della Hardman made deep and lasting impressions on thousands of people, whether those encounters were a few minutes with a local tradesman, or a lifetime friendship with a neighbor.

Her friends cherished her personal letters, and kind words, but Ms. Hardman, who died in 2005, would have quickly adapted to the not-so-personal social media prevalent today, according to her daughter, Andrea Taylor.

“She would have been a great Facebook person,” Ms. Taylor said. “She could have kept in touch with every person she came in contact with. And she would have. That was just her nature. She had a gift of connection with people.”

On Saturday, July 30, Island residents will once again pause to do honor the advice Della gave to so many: Savor the moment. The 12th annual Della Hardman Day festivities begin in Ocean Park at 4 p.m.

Organizers, including Ms. Taylor scrambled this week to rework the program when U.S. Rep. Terry Sewell, who represents the rural Alabama district that includes Selma and other important sites of the civil rights movement, had to cancel her appearance on Martha’s Vineyard because of an unexpected schedule change in Washington.

Instead, Lucia Bacote James will speak about her lifelong friendship with Della Hardman. The two women shared a deep bond, and Ms. James was a frequent visitor to Ms. Hardman’s Island home. “I don’t want to talk about anything you already know up there,” Ms. James said by telephone from her West Virginia home this week. “I would like to talk about things that might have been early influences on Della becoming who she was.”

Few Islanders will be surprised to learn that Ms. Hardman demonstrated the kind of innate compassion that they experienced during her later years, as she did when she was a young college professor at West Virginia State College.

“She would take you in, individually, even having you as a guest, putting you up, listening to what you had to say,” Ms. James said. “She was very generous. It didn’t matter whatever your station of life. She brought you in and embraced you and gave you a feeling you could rise, you could achieve whatever you were seeking.”

Her daughter will also speak at the event. She said she has come to know a different side of her mother from the many people she touched. She remembers a local tradesman who approached her on the ferry. He recognized Ms. Taylor from a family picture he had seen while working at Ms. Hardman’s home, and wanted to tell her how much he appreciated her kindness.

Ms. Taylor was recently contacted by a woman who met Ms. Hardman as a teenager in Ghana, and tracked her down after hearing Ms. Hardman in one of the radio programs she created for public radio.

“It’s amazing to me that she had that kind of impact,” Ms. Taylor said. “You see them as a parent and don’t necessarily locate them in a broader context.”

Her impact was never more evident than in a photograph circulating on social media. Standing with his arm around Ms. Hardman is a tall young man with a broad smile. The man is Barack Obama, and it was taken long before most people knew the future president’s name. Now that was a moment to savor.