Tributes to John A. Mizzi pour in

Veteran journalist and war historian John A. Mizzi passed away on Monday 4 February at the age of 87.

Mizzi's distinguished career as a journalist began at the tender age of 15 in 1940 during WWII, writing reports from Malta under aerial siege, for British publications - perhaps the youngest to do so from any frontline of battle at the time.

He was news editor of the Times of Malta for many years, frequently serving as acting editor of both the Times of Malta and the Sunday Times of Malta. He was also correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, Independent Television News, British United Press, Religious News Services and a contributor to various media in the United Kingdom, the United States and Malta.

Even after retirement, he was a much sought after interviewer, especially on television, particularly on the war years. He dedicated his later years to the editing of Malta at War, a definitive, illustrated six-volume record of the island's struggle during the Second World War.

But former AFM official Ivan Consiglio remembers yet another side of Mizzi's varied career - as a long-standing member of the Scout Movement in Malta.

"Several of my age peers and friends will concur that John - who went by the nickname 'Cubbie' - was a persistent and relentless individual, who had taken upon himself the often difficult and challenging task of leading us, a countless bunch of growing lads in the Scout Movement at St Aloysius College Group, with honour and a sense of a family's collective soul," Consiglio said, describing how 'Cubbie' had a direct, and profoundly positive, influence on the boy scouts that came under his wing.

"He provided his scouts with fun-filled, interesting, exciting and wonderful experiences, while also displaying his best hallmark of kind and reasonable strictness. This helped shaping of so many people's lives, which in turn set them off in the right career path or other major life decisions. We carry in our hearts his character formation of us young boys, now men in society, who will miss his distinct sense of humour."

Active in the Scout Movement since boyhood, both in Malta and abroad, John Mizzi was given the highest decoration by the Russian Scout Association for his help in the re-establishing of Scouting in that country in the 1990s.

But in listing his accomplishments with the scouts, Ivan Consiglio does not omit to mention his contributions to local journalism and historical scholarship, and in a poignant anecdote, illustrates how his success in both disciplines are bound to be intertwined to his legacy.

"The shock of his sudden loss these days has jolted us, especially after we saw him some weeks ago on a BBC TV documentary about the WW2 Siege of Malta. As his scouts, we had together only recently celebrated his 86th birthday with many current or past Scouts gathered around him," Consiglio said.

Writer and lecturer of Maltese literature Adrian Grima testifies to Mizzi's generous disposition and kindly intelligence.

"All writers and researchers who have asked him for information and advice know that he had a fantastic memory, but he never used it to hold grudges against those who disagreed with him or may have wronged him.

"Recently I had the good fortune of collaborating with him on a story I wrote set in the Second World War. He talked to me about this grandfather, Anton Muscat Fenech, and about the biography he had just written in Maltese. He was a man with a insatiable thirst for knowledge and for shedding light on the past and the present. It is   such a joy to work closely with someone so full of life and energy," Grima said.

Elsewhere tributes came also from Simon Cusens: managing director of Technoline, and also a keen WWII enthusiast who was involved in annual commemoration events to mark the anniversary of Operation Pedestal (or the Santa Marija convoy, as the event is better known locally).

"John A Mizzi was my WWII mentor," Cusens said. "He was a reporter in the war and knew the finer details. We shared a common admiration for the GC islanders and the hardships they had to endure until victory came. He was an ardent supporter of the war effort and very proud to tell the story of Malta GC. He was the inspiration and the source of Malta's finest and most detailed account of WWII known as 'Malta at war' which stands unfinished even after Volume 6 was begun.

Cusens paid tribute to the scholarship and research that went into these exhaustive volumes.

"No matter how many editions he ran, John was continuously researching and unearthing more and more material which he continued to share with his readers and many viewers too. As for me, I have been researching WWII and tracked down more than 300 Malta veterans taking their stories. I am currently reading for a MA in Maltese Studies at the UOM and am in my final year. My dissertation is documenting the role of women during WWII Malta, to which John Mizzi contributed as well."

Among his other achievements, Mizzi compiled various television documentaries on the United States and several European countries, notably the Soviet Union, and collaborated in documentaries shown on the BBC and Granada.

He authored a number of meticulously researched books, notably Gallipoli - The Malta Connection, of the Anglo-French expedition in Turkey during the First World War; Scouting in Malta, a history of the Scout Movement; and Massacre in Malta, an account of the hijacking of an Egyptian airliner in 1985.