Growing old is “the greatest gift” one could ask for, according to Maria Farrugia, who turned 111 years, three months and 25 days old earlier this week – becoming the oldest person on record in Malta since the Public Registry was set up in 1863.
“It is the greatest gift and I thank God for every single day I lived,” Maria said.
Born in 1912, Maria is the only living person who lived through World War I (1914-1918), the Sette Giugno uprising (June 7 and 9, 1919) and World War II (1939-1945). She recalls Malta gaining its independence in 1964 and becoming a republic in 1974, followed by Freedom Day in 1979 as well as EU accession in 2004.
“June 2 was a memorable day… Maria Farrugia became the person who lived the longest from among the Maltese and Gozitans,” said Raymond Mangion who had been patiently waiting for Maria to pass that very specific age for almost a decade.
Maria Farrugia’s birthday card on the day she turned 111 on March 7.“I have been visiting Maria since she turned 102. She is a distant relative of mine. I knew that the oldest person on record was Ġanni Schembri, who died in 1868 at the age of 111, three months and 25 days. So once Maria passed that mark, I went to visit her again and wrote an article to commemorate the day,” said Mangion, head of the Legal History and Methodology Department at the University of Malta.
Mangion penned an article that was published in It-Torċa and Il-Mument in which he outlined the life of Maria who currently lives with relatives “and who still helps out at home”.
Interestingly, he points out that both Maria and Schembri – who held the record before her – were born on March 7.
June 2 was a memorable day… Maria Farrugia became the person who lived the longest from among the Maltese and Gozitans
Maria was born in Mosta on March 7, 1912, to Anna and Anġlu Galea. Her father was a stevedore whose job involved carrying baskets of coal onto barges at the port – even though he could not swim. He later went to work at a farm known as Ta’ Viku that was located where the Santa Venera Lidl now stands.
“Maria has memories of a tragic accident that happened there in 1921. Back then, there was a railway in the area. A train crashed into bulls,” Mangion said, adding that she recalled seeing the dying bulls being put out of their misery to salvage the meat.
Maria was born and lived during a time of poverty and she did not go to school as, at the time, it was not yet compulsory. Despite this, she learnt how to read and read novels, took sewing classes and learnt to cook.
Maria Farrugia on her wedding way with her late husband, Ġorġ in 1941.She also helped her mother – who lived till the age of 100 – sell milk for one penny per can and worked as a cleaner for some time.
In 1941, she married Ġorġ Farrugia with whom she had three children: Anġlu, Josephine and Karmena. Her husband was a soldier in the King’s Own Regiment and, later, following an injury, he was as employed with the Air Raids Precautions which would clean up debris and search for casualties following air raids. Her husband died before he turned 50.
She lost her brother, Pawlu during the first WW II air raid on Malta in June 1940. He had been out playing the terramaxka (music box) when he died, despite taking shelter in an Msida stable.
Mangion has long been calling for the introduction of a Collective Memory Act. Such a law, he said, would provide a legal framework for the collection of all these memories. The university professor has been working on doing so for 50 years by collecting stories, with his most recent effort targeting those of residents at the state-run elderly care home St Vincent de Paul.