Anthony R. Curmi writes:

When Francis and I joined Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas) as junior clerks within three days of one another way back in 1950, at 16 years of age, little did we think that our career paths would follow very much the same pattern. Until then we had never met as his secondary schooling was at St Edward’s College and mine at the Lyceum.

Although posted to different branches of the bank, we quickly struck a friendship and, in no time, we started studying after working hours for the London Institute of Bankers’ banking diploma. Weeks before the annual examinations, over a four-year period at weekends, we used to meet for joint question-and-answer sessions at his home in Pietà. I happily recall the goodies which his widowed mother used to prepare for us along with a hot or cold drink.

I managed to obtain the diploma one year ahead of Francis but this did not dislodge our friendship. Indeed, even after we both got married, he and Marthese and my wife Joyce and I spent many a Saturday evening at the Malta Union Club, Sliema, at an occasional dinner dance or, more often, enjoying a cheesy-hammy toasted sandwich at the bar. Those were the days when going out for a full meal was a luxury we could not afford on our salary.

As our careers progressed, it became evident that we were both marked for accelerated promotion and destined to reach great heights in banking in Malta. Indeed, when Barclays felt that our experience here needed to be augmented by service abroad, I was seconded for one year in a senior executive post to the bank’s local head office in Nassau, Bahamas, and he to similar posts at three different locations in South Africa. These proved to be very rewarding experiences for both of us.

The turbulent years of the 1970s resulted in Francis being seconded to Bank of Valletta to lend a much-needed helping hand to the general manager, Dennis Degiorgio (also a former Barclays colleague), when I myself was appointed as the first general manager of Mid-Med Bank (that assumed Barclays’ banking business in Malta). Thus, we found ourselves in the top echelons of competitor banks!

Nonetheless we remained friends. After I resigned in 1980 from my post to pursue my banking career in London, and my immediate successor also resigned, Francis returned to Mid-Med as general manager.

As our respective wives kept in close touch over the years even well into Francis’s and my retirement years, I was aware that he was bravely fighting the illness that took his earthly life a few days ago.

I visited him in hospital a couple of times and could hardly believe that he was the same ebullient friend, always ready to relate the latest joke he had come across, I had known for 70 years.

May the Lord grant his soul eternal rest. To Marthese, Simon and Kathleen and their respective families I extend deepest sympathy, also on behalf of my wife.

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