Joseph W. Psaila writes:

It is wisely said that “the good teacher explains, the superior teacher demonstrates and the great teacher inspires.” Mario Vella, who has passed away on June 3 at the age of 70, was all three but he excelled within the third category. His teaching was a constant work of love. The hundreds of students, who have attended his chemistry classes in over three decades at the Gozo Secondary School and Sixth Form (Gozo), can vouch for this. His teaching reached beyond the instruction in subject matter to an education in personality.

If I were to associate with Mario an element from those 118 in the periodic table, I would say that Mario had a heart of gold. He always made himself available to his students, many of whom have made a career in the engineering and medical fields, and he enjoyed their success as if they were members of his large extended family. Once a teacher, Mario was always a teacher – and a meticulous one at that. Some of his close colleagues still mention the fact that he used to spend Sundays in the chemistry laboratory to prepare, to the utmost detail, the apparatus for the GCE and Matsec exams which students were to undergo on Monday morning… and how on one particular occasion he had to jump over the school boundary wall to be in the lab in accordance with his self-imposed timetable..

Mario was among the second generation of the few chemistry teachers in Gozo after the subject was introduced in secondary schools in the late 1950s. He used to gratefully acknowledge Anton Farrugia (chemistry) and George Grech (physics) as his mentors. Mario’s inquisitive mind was always in search of further knowledge whether as a radio amateur or as a student in such fields as geology and the mechanisms of historical aeroplanes and racing cars. Searching the night sky, with some of the members of the Astronomical Society of Malta, was Mario’s latest passion. I feel his curiosity has now been satisfied with the sight of the face of God who is light so bright as to be darkness to our mortal eyes.

Mario would have stared in disbelief at any eulogy however mild. For any help, however small, he used to think that one has moved mountains on his behalf. Such was his very nature.

To his wife Maria, to his son David, to his daughter Ruth and to his mother Vincenza, I extend my sympathy with the words of St John Henry Newman: “Lord, you cannot give me back what you have taken away from me; but you can give me more, because you give me Thyself.”