Even though Ileana Curmi’s father passed away five decades ago, she still feels close to him as she lives at the Simblija home for the elderly located right next door to the Naxxar post-secondary school named in his honour – author Giovanni Curmi.

Ileana will soon turn 90 but her childhood days have been forever captured in a book of poetry penned by her late father in the 1940s.

“He was lovely and kind to everyone. He was always there when I needed him. I have many memories of him writing his poetry at our Sliema home,” she says.

Born in 1900, fer father graduated as a lawyer “because his parents wanted him to continue the family line”, says Ileana, sitting on her wheelchair at the care home where she lives, with a copy of Times of Malta on her lap.

He never practised law because he chose to teach Italian and write “in the language of Dante”.

“Poetry was a hobby he took seriously,” she says, recalling how, as she grew older, he would read out his poetry to her and her mother, Lucy.

Throughout his life, he wrote many poetry collections, short stories, and novels. He is celebrated for his contribution to literature and education. He founded the Society of Maltese Writers in 1951 that, for the first time, brought local writers together no matter what language they wrote in.

Some of his works were translated from Italian to Maltese and some featured in Italian anthologies. Throughout his writing career, he

won several prestigious awards such as the Concorso Nazionale di Poesia e Narrativa and Premio Nazionale di Poesia ‘Spiga d’Oro’. The Italian government also gave him a cultural award for promoting the Italian language in 1962, a language he taught to thousands of Maltese young men during his teaching days.

Ileana’s favourite was the poetry collection Il canzoniere della bambina, inspired by her birth and early childhood.

“That one I love because he wrote it about me,” says Ileana who was the only child.

The family lived in Sliema but moved to Rabat when the war broke out. Ileana has clear memories of the moment though she was seven years old.

“I remember the first air raid. I heard a noise, and I woke up and my mum said, ‘the war has started’. I had been preparing for it and had been packing my toys,” she recalls.

Her aunt’s Rabat home was very large and had a shelter. It later became an old people’s home which Ileana lived in for several years before moving to Simblija about six years ago.

During the war, her dad continued teaching whenever he could. It was round about that time that Ileana started reading Times of Malta every day, which she still does till today and has even penned some articles that were published.

“I inherited a love of writing from my dad,” she says. Her father taught at the Lyceum and later became headmaster. He also served as assistant director of education. His career slowed down when he suffered cerebral thrombosis after which he still continued writing until he died in June 1973.

Years later, in 1987, the Higher Secondary School, in Naxxar, was renamed after him, becoming the Giovanni Curmi Higher Secondary School.

“I read it in the papers. I was very pleased. He would have been pleased,” she says, adding that she has visited the school and regaled them a portrait of her father.

Ileana studied history at the University of Malta even though, back then, she was told “only strange people” studied. For many years, she did not work but then, one day, she was on a bus and a tourist asked her a question and she replied passionately. A few days later, she came across an advert in the Times of Malta for tourist guides and she started training and became a guide working all over Malta and Gozo.

Over the years, Ileana worked to ensure that her father’s name goes down in history. She organised her father’s works and set up exhibitions as well as penned articles about his life that appeared in the media.