When, last Thursday at 4.30pm, I received the news that President Emeritus Guido de Marco had passed away, the pitch of my voice as I incredulously asked whether the person giving me the information was telling me the truth was so unusual that all the journalists working in the newsroom looked up.

Seconds later, as I informed my colleagues of the sad news and we began planning what to do in the following day’s newspaper to pay tribute to the man who gave so much to his country, it became clear that whatever we did would not have been enough. Fitting Prof. de Marco’s life into a few pages of the newspaper was an impossible task.

We set out to do it, as best as we could, first with the compilation of a list of people with whom we wanted to get in touch for their comments, while others worked on the sequence of events and his biography, and others started looking for the photographs that, as we say in journalism, speak louder than words.

It was only when the paper was put to bed that I could really stop and think hard about what Prof. de Marco signified – to his family, to the country, and to me as well. Thankfully, I am lucky to have had so many personal memories of this outstanding statesman, and these are what I would like to share with you today.

Ironically, the first thing that came to mind was something that, as from last Thursday, is what journalists will have to write whenever they refer to him.

Let me explain. Prof. de Marco was not a punctual person, and this was one of his few defects. Quite often we were given a time for a press conference, and Prof. de Marco turned up 30 minutes late. I was still a rookie reporter at the time – I’m talking about more than 20 years ago – and although we were always irritated by his tardiness, we respected him so much that we never commented about it to him.

And this was especially so because he always ended up bringing a smile to our faces when, at the start of the conference, he used to apologise and say something along the lines of: “I hope that tomorrow I will not be referred to as ‘the late Guido de Marco’ in your newspaper”.

No matter how many times he said it, it always had the same effect – that of breaking the ice before he moved on to deliver the press conference to which we had been summoned. And when I thought about this on Thursday night, and seeing that we will now have to refer to him in that way, it did bring a sense of loss.

Of course, nobody will miss him more than his family. But it is the whole country that has lost a gentleman, a statesman and an outstanding politician.

Back to my memories. He was Foreign Minister when he travelled with then President Censu Tabone on an official visit to India, in January 1992. I had covered the event for The Times, and I remember his concern when, on one occasion, we found it hard to send our copy to Malta.

In those years, there were no e-mails, and no laptops either, and we used to hand-write our reports and send them by fax. On one occasion, there must have been some disruption in telecommunications, as the faxes we were sending were not being received. Prof. de Marco was walking past the business centre and heard us expressing our concerns; he stopped in his tracks and came in to see what the problem was.

And he stayed there until, after several attempts, we got the OK that our stories had arrived in Malta.

Each time I used to walk up to him for a comment or to ask him a question, he used to take my arm in his and walk with me as he gave me the answer, carefully choosing his words as he always did. I was always too shy to tell him that I could not write what he was saying as it is impossible to do so when someone is holding your arm while you walk. So, as best as I could, I would try to remember what he had said to me and write it afterwards. If I ever got it wrong, he never called me to tell me so.

But, before all this, that is before I became a journalist, there is another moment concerning Prof. de Marco that remains engraved in my memory.

It was some time in 1984, at the height of the Church schools issue. A meeting was held just outside St Aloysius College, where I received my secondary education. Prof. de Marco was one of the speakers, and he held the audience captive as he recounted his own personal story and the sacrifices his parents had made for him to get an education at that same college.

You could have heard a pin drop. It was mesmerising and, in the context of what was happening at the time, it was an amazing speech. It may not have been one of his most important ones, considering the political career he subsequently had, but that address is still imprinted on my memory.

In more recent years, as Prof. de Marco moved on from minister to President – with so many accomplishments in between – and from President to a life with fewer public appearances, I did not get to see him much, although I always asked after him when I had occasion to meet his son Mario.

Just a few weeks ago, I sent word with one of my colleagues that I would like to interview him on how his life had changed since he had been diagnosed with medical problems that prevented him from being as active as he would have liked to be. He sent word back saying that it would be his pleasure.

But I never got the chance to do that interview. It will remain one of the regrets of my professional life.

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