Malta Remembered: Then and Now: a Love Story

By Margaret Dexter

In 1963, Margaret Dexters husband made an impulsive decision to pack up and move to England for a year. They leased their home in Santa Barbara, California, and together with their four children made an unforgettable journey by land and sea, throwing caution to the wind.
The move to England exposed the Dexters to much of the cultural richness of Europe; unfortunately, they returned to face financial ruin and cliff-hanging events. In 1967, Stillman Dexters work led him to Libya, forcing him to leave the family. In 1969, Margaret, five children and two poodles moved to the island of Malta, not far from Libya and closer to Stillman. Their life became almost idyllic, promising a rosy future.
By November 1970, Libyas tense political situation changed everything. Libyas leader, Muammar Qaddaffi, denied renewal of all American work permits. The family plans for what might have been were swept away by one telegram.
Margaret Dexter pens a loving tribute not only to the island of Malta and its special inhabitants, but also to her familys remarkable peregrination. Malta Remembered is an inspiring story of how one couple blessed and united by good fortune braved waves of adversity with hard work and love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 13, 2009
• ISBN: 9780595896707

Margaret Dexter

Margaret Dexter has been writing since childhood, distributing her first handwritten, illustrated newsletter to neighbors in Indianapolis, Indiana. She lives in Connecticut, where she is a freelance writer and photographer, and is currently compiling a volume of short stories and essays.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013, 2014 by Margaret M. P. Dexter

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse LLC

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-0-5954-5357-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-0751-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-0-5958-9670-7 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 8/25/2014

Contents

Author’s Notes

Introduction

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Memories of Malta, 1970

Vintage Malta

Malta 2005

Twenty

Bibliography

In loving memory of my husband Stillman- and with much love to our four grandchildren. Charlotte, Vincent, Julia, and Zebulon.

My special thanks to my publishing associates and editors at iUniverse for their suggestions and encouragement—to my children for their verification and approval—and to my clever granddaughter Charlotte for three years of patient computer assistance.

Author’s Notes

.Kismetén zyadé olmas

Nothing happens unless it is predestined

—Old Turkish Proverb from The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel

This is a story about soul mates written in the stars—from 1923 to 2005—stars in rare alignment. I set our stage by introducing you first to early family history. From there we move on to relive memories of life in Santa Barbara. Back in our halcyon days of 1963, my husband made a rash decision to take a year off from work—because his business was doing well. He believed we should move to England for a school year- for England to be our home base for cultural enrichment. As it turned out, we visited Switzerland, France, and Germany. Back home again in 1964, unexpected critical events tested and strengthened our family bonds—challenging years that were only the first of many stepping-stones—leading to a career change for my husband in 1967: to work almost half a world away from family and me. After that eighteen-month separation, we moved to Malta to be closer to him in December 1969. The following year was unique and nearly perfect—my husband was hard at work just a few hours away and pulling us out of debt. Nevertheless, 1970 proved to be the pivotal year—the year in Malta that would forever change our lives because of a political edict.

In the summer of 1996, I wrote a thesis about Malta for an English class at Connecticut College. My professor, Minerva Morris suggested that I develop it further into a book someday to tell what it was like for an American family to live there. Yet, reliving those days again as a memoir didn’t begin until November 2004 when a brochure* arrived in the mail announcing a Mediterranean cruise—all travelers were to board the legendary yacht, Sea Cloud, in Valletta, Malta—a trip too wonderful for words. The Sea Cloud in Malta—someway, somehow I had to go.

Passengers would meet at the Corinthia Palace Hotel, staying to enjoy two days touring the islands by bus before boarding ship in Grand Harbour. Embarking August 6, 2005 for seven nights, Sea Cloud would visit ports of call from Valletta to Sicily to Capri, on to Livorno, to Genoa—disembarking in Nice along Italy’s coast in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The trip sounded irresistible. I could see Malta again.

On an impulse, I mailed a Christmas card, along with a note, to our former landlord, Joe Xuereb, and his wife, Doris. Although we had not exchanged a word in thirty-five years, I wrote that I planned to be in Malta in August 2005, that my husband had died, and that I would be traveling alone. If they were home, I would love to see them. By the end of July, I’d still heard nothing. Possibly they were dead. I had to find out.

When Stillman retired, we often spoke of our visiting Malta together, wishing to see Villa Pinto, Joe, and Doris again, but it wasn’t to be.

Although a few names are fictitious, I’ve used family nicknames most of the time in this story. Ellen-Marie is known as Bunnie and Bun; Stillman III as Brother; Emerson as Emer; Caroline as Cretia (her middle name is Lucretia); and Katharine as Kitty and Kate—three names for the same girl. The children’s father was George to business associates, but Dad, Daddy, and Stillman to me. He was Grandy to Charlotte. Vincent was two when he died; Julia and Zeb had not been born.

Introduction

To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.

—Ecclesiastes: 3: 1

October 15, 2005 a month after my return

Today I held Malta in my hand again, just a small piece—the fossil I found in the dust near Villa Pinto, cherished from years ago. Its embedded scallop shell still smiles at me, flooding my mind with memories of a lifestyle that is no more, of the special year we lived off the beaten path.

Gone forever are those languid, lazy days when we lived at a snail’s pace, when we lived without a telephone, a cell phone, a computer, an iPhone, or a Blackberry. Television was limited to two stations—many times with no programs at all—and our doctor made house calls. A postman delivered mail to the front door twice a day. The milkman delivered eggs, cottage cheese, and yogurt. Pasteurized cow’s milk and goat’s milk too arrived in small glass bottles. Twice a week a little boy carried loaves of bread, still hot from the oven, to our doorstep for sixpence a loaf. Our rent included a maid twice a week to wash our floors and stairs. The honk of a farmer’s truck parked near our driveway announced his arrival to sell locally grown vegetables and blood oranges from Sicily, a variety we squeezed for the first time in our villa’s kitchen—red orange juice for breakfast was a delicious novelty.

Malta’s saga, the fascinating history of an archipelago about sixty miles off the coast of Sicily, was totally unknown to me in 1969. I was absorbed in raising children, steeped in domestic life in Santa Barbara, California. When we made plans to move there, I had to search for its location in my atlas. Just after we left, the main island began to change, making gradual progress to become part of the modern world .To this day, news of the country is rarely—if ever—read or heard of in the United States. Once tourists discovered its climate and began to learn of its distinctive history, one that precedes the pyramids, travelers began not only to visit, but vacation in masse.

We are among the lucky ones to have lived there before immediate communication, before the electronic world emerged. During our time, we were amazed, amused, and sometimes frustrated by the unhurried pace but greatly enriched by our daily life experiences. In spite of a couple of heartless discoveries—that year was our year of years. The sounds of Malta, its sunrises, its personalities, its silences, its heat, its wind, its stark rock beauty, and the moods of the Mediterranean—I loved them all.

In 1967, my husband began a new career with the Bechtel Corporation. Sent to Benghazi, Libya, a coastal city on the Bay of Sidra, he lived and worked on a pipeline project for the Libyan government, an eighteen-month assignment. The family was not included in the contract. We couldn’t bear the thought or the reality of another long separation after our reunion in spring; we simply had to change our living arrangement. He decided and I agreed that the children and I should meet him in Malta for Christmas, find a house, and live there—the trip, of course, was at our expense. Stillman could then commute the distance, about four hundred thirty-five miles, from Benghazi to Malta every six weeks by boat or plane. Life would be absolutely rosy.

He felt quite certain we would continue to live outside the United States because the company’s international division had hired him. We loved our house too much to worry about renters abusing it again. We decided to sell it, burn our bridges in California, and start a new chapter—we’d be away a long time.

We met as planned. After our reunion, we stayed on several weeks in a hotel before we were happily ensconced in our villa. I learned my way around, thanks to help from Joe and Doris Xuereb. We were absolutely thrilled to be living in Malta, and my hopes for the future knew no bounds.

***

We were unaware (most people are) of how much has been recorded and written about the tiny Maltese islands since 1530—the year they were yielded by treaty to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem by Charles V of Spain. The Order stemmed from a Benedictine hospital for pilgrims dedicated to St. John the Baptist, established in the eleventh century. The Order’s complicated hierarchy and lengthy history is worthy of library research for the reader and is much too lengthy for my purpose here. I will touch upon it briefly in Chapter ten.

Famous names appear on a roster of those who visited and influenced the islands. Queen Dowager Adelaide was the first crowned head to visit (in 1838–39) since Alfonso of Aragon’s visit in 1432. Queen Victoria encouraged the Maltese lace-making industry by ordering eight dozen long and eight dozen short pair of mitts and a scarf.

Her granddaughter Alexandria, future Empress of Russia journeyed there with her father Grand Duke Ludwig of Hesse in 1890 to visit her brother-in-law Prince Philip of Battenburg was stationed there and commissioned to torpedo boat HMS scout. Other distinguished names are listed: Napoleon Bonaparte, Benjamin Disraeli, D. H. Lawrence, Sir Walter Scott, King George VI, Queens Elizabeth I and Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, the Mountbattens, Lord Louis and Edwina—merely to name a few who felt great affection for Malta. However, it was the royal couple, Elizabeth and Philip who actually lived in Malta in the early years following their marriage in 1947. Philip was still on naval service and she was known as Princess Elizabeth. Because of happy memories they traveled back and forth many times. Although we are not famous, in thought and for the same reason, I add our family names to the roster.

Not long ago I finished reading Jon Meacham’s book, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, written in 2003. Meacham contributes to history by citing the following amusing incident. Preparing to meet for what would be their last Big Three meeting with Stalin at Yalta, Churchill jokingly grumbled to Roosevelt’s dear friend and aide, Harry Hopkins, that a worse place for the three to meet—at Yalta in the Crimea—could not be found. A heavy drinker, Churchill said he would, however, get through it with an adequate supply of whiskey to fend off typhus and lice.

I laughed as I read the inspired couplet Churchill cabled to President Roosevelt:

I shall be waiting on the quay. No more let us falter/ From Malta to Yalta let nobody alter.** On January 1, 1945 Churchill joined President Franklin Roosevelt aboard the presidential yacht Quincy in Grand Harbour before flying on to Russia to rendezvous with Stalin.

***

Before moving ahead to the years that led the children and me to Malta, even earlier background history is important, particularly my meeting someone who prompted an impetuous veer off center—to the path not taken—where this roller coaster love story began.

One

In August 1926, at the age of three, Lawrence Prentice Coats became George Stillman Dexter Jr. He was promptly nicknamed Sonny Boy and Stilly by a childless couple, Stillman Sr. and Ellen. G.S.D. Sr. was a Harvard man born in Brookline Massachusetts. Although he loved his studies at Harvard, severe asthma apparently prevented graduation with his class. Ellen Douglas McLean was born in Mansfield Ohio. After attending finishing school she lived with her family on their estate Tanglewood in St. Louis Missouri where she was known as the belle of every ball. Ellen met Stillman through family connections in Boston and St. Louis. They were soon married at Tanglewood in 1923. Early vivid memories for Stilly began in Redlands, California, where in wonderful orange grove country, he and his parents watched the construction of their new home; as it progressed, he helped paste many pictures in their scrapbook.

After they moved in, Sonny remembered the Chinese houseboy named Lee, who moved in as live-in help for his mother, saying, I take good care of little boy and family. Lee also cooked, served, and kept the house very clean.

Stilly remembered the cold nights, when the radio alerted ranchers all around the county to light their smudge pots; heavy frost was expected. He and his father coughed together in the smoke as they lit the pots through the rows of trees; it was a dirty business (before wind machines). It’s hard on your father’s heart and asthma, dear, but he insists on doing it himself to keep the oranges from freezing, his mother said. He likes you to go with him.

It was in Redlands that Sonny Boy loved his first dogs—Bulldogs, Monte and Mitzie—and where, when he was five, he took his pet chickens, Matilda, Lefty, and Right Foot for many wild rides in a basket on his bicycle. To make his life even more perfect, his favorite Uncle Emerson and Auntie Jean (his mother’s brother and wife) lived nearby; he and his parents visited them regularly. They too owned a house and an orange grove.

The early years in Redlands were happy times for a little lad who loved being at home, where; when they weren’t traveling he attended Mrs. Souza’s School for Young Gentlemen. Much too often for him those days were interrupted. They visited close friends Harold and Peggy Harder, in Larchmont, New York; and his paternal grandparents, George and Emma Dexter, and his father’s sister and her husband, Auntie Polly and Uncle Lewis Hill, in Boston. Another special memory was eating his first watermelon in St. Louis, Missouri, the home of his adored grandmother, Mrs. Emerson McLean, who later followed them to Santa Barbara when he, his mother, and stepfather moved there. Whether by car, by train, or by ship, the family traveled a lot in the mid ’20s and early ’30s. Stilly was indeed the curly-haired darling of lots and lots of relatives.

Oddly enough, within months of each other, in the spring of 1932, Stillman Sr. died in Redlands, and Peggy died in Larchmont. Unfortunately, Stillman Sr.’s death came just two years after he and Ellen had adopted Roderick (Roddy), a brother for Stilly.

While consoling each other, the dear friends, Ellen and Harold, decided to marry. The merger provided Ellen’s boys, both nine, with a stepfather, and provided her with a new husband.***∗ Harold also had sons—twelve years old—to add to the mix, one adopted named Dale, and one of his own, George Jr. They had no nicknames.

After the marriage, Ellen and Harold moved from Larchmont, where Harold owned a textile mill, to a huge, ten-bedroom house in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Harold’s son George attended a New York military academy, and Dale attended Avon Old Farms in Avon, Connecticut. Ellen enrolled her boys at Avon for a year also. For reasons unexplained to her son’s satisfaction, she moved Roddy and Stilly to Eaglebrook in Deerfield, Massachusetts.

Stillman remembered the years at both boarding schools as wrenching, tearful times for him and his mother, yet ultimately, many years later, he would attribute his future successes to all he had learned at Eaglebrook during those difficult, character-building years. It was his lifelong delight to remember the mandatory requirement at Avon Old Farms: young lads were to wear white tie, top hat and tails for formal occasions.

Roddy stayed on for his senior year, but Stilly had to pack up to accompany his mother and stepfather to Santa Barbara to finish high school at Laguna Blanca, a small (at that time) private school in Hope Ranch because the harsh weather in the East had become unsuitable for his mother’s health.

***

On a hot August day in 1940, Ellen McLean Dexter Harder died unexpectedly of a heart attack. Roddy, apparently not as affected, sailed through school and graduated with honors, named most likely to succeed. Stillman was devastated; he had loved his mother longest and best. He wanted to quit school. His equally bereft grandmother—his mother’s mother and his beloved Mater—comforted him, all the while insisting that he must graduate.

Son, you must soldier on, she implored.

Mater knew all about soldiering on. Her youngest son, Roderick, had drowned as a young boy, and her second son, Emerson, a heavy smoker, had died the year before of lung cancer.

Losing her daughter, my mother, so soon after Uncle Emerson—outliving her three children nearly killed my grandmother too, Stillman would later recall. Reading her Bible every day comforted her. Running, playing lots of soccer helped me. My heart was broken, but I stuck with the studies. I received my diploma from Laguna Blanca. My friend Britt Johnson and I graduated in a class of two.

***

Harold Harder, handsome fashion plate and stepfather, (who enjoyed bourbon as much as marriage) remarried within months. Introducing a stepmother to eighteen-year-old boys still living at home, needless to say, did not make for a congenial arrangement.

In September 1942, aware of the escalating war, both boys enlisted in the service—Roddy in the air force and Stillman in the army. Two months later, in November, Stillman received shattering news: a letter from Harold Harder told him that Dale had been married and then killed in action five weeks later in Egypt while serving as a captain with the British Army’s Gordon Highlanders. He was the first to die in his class at Avon Old Farms in Avon, Connecticut; the news was devastating to his former school and a terrible blow to all who knew and loved Dale.

Powerfully patriotic and eager to serve his country, Stillman served three years in the European theater of operations; he mustered out in September 1945 with an honorable discharge and silver and bronze service stars. Although thin and smoking too much, he was otherwise miraculously unscathed. His group landed on Omaha Beach four days after D-day. The memory of driving off the ship to join his group with a truckload of Purple Hearts—along narrow planking with no room for error—would give him nightmares for years; he would also relive dives into hastily dug foxholes to avoid enemy fire.

Ultimately assigned as driver for General Pete Quesada during the Battle of the Bulge, Stillman, along with General Quesada, experienced many near-miss explosions in their open jeep.

If the call of nature hadn’t stopped us for a few minutes one day, he would recall, we both would have been blown up.

***

The first week in January 1943 I moved with my family from Indianapolis, Indiana, to Santa Barbara because of a shortage of doctors. Physicians left clinics and private practice in droves to join the service. My stepfather had been a doctor and a colonel in WWI. Too old for WWII, he promptly took over the practice of one of those doctors, and for a while, became chief of staff at Cottage Hospital and chief of obstetrics at St. Francis Hospital

After completing high school the following June, I enrolled in Santa Barbara State Teachers College (which would later become University of California Santa Barbara). I planned to become a kindergarten teacher—majoring in early childhood education—with music minor and a passion for singing in Mrs. Helen Barnett’s a cappella choir—maybe a professional singer.

In the fall of 1945 mother and I—and a lady named Mrs. Harder—were among a large cast of other amateurs rehearsing to appear in a play at the Lobero Theater in late November.

The play, The Gates of Youth, received lots of publicity, with pictures on billboards and in the local paper, because George and Lily Broadhurst, of New York’s Broadhurst Theater fame were presenting their latest play: a light romantic comedy.

The Broadhursts, new celebrities in town, had fled from their home on the French Riviera in 1939. Fearing Hitler and the war, they had been encouraged by many admirers and helped financially to reestablish in Santa Barbara.

Although The Gates of Youth (directed and produced by the famous couple) delighted Santa Barbara audiences, the show did not go on to Broadway. After three performances, the play closed forever at the Lobero Theater.

Cast as the ingénue, my debut was also my swansong. After two spoken lines, a waltz danced with an aging attorney and then the tango with a young Russian dance instructor—that was it. My fleeting appearance was barely noticeable.

Destiny intervened. Someone in the audience did notice me. Sitting in the audience with no interest in the play, a new arrival in town waited through three nightly performances to drive his stepmother home. After the curtain fell the last night, November 30 I stopped backstage to speak to Mrs. Harder, who was talking to a stranger. I looked at him; he looked at me then turned to her and said, Hi, Anita, please introduce me.

She did, saying, This is my stepson, Stillman Harder.

That’s how we met. For the rest of his life, if someone asked Stillman how he met his wife, he would reply with a grin, Oh, my stepmother introduced us—it was love at first sight.

It wasn’t love at first sight for me. I liked him. I recognized something fine about him. Had I known him in another life?. His manners were courtly; he glistened with wholesomeness. Several long phone calls and a noon cafeteria lunch later, we had a real date on Christmas night. He introduced me to his brother, Roddy, and several friends of his at his favorite haunt, Santa Barbara’s Coral Casino. During the drive home, he explained something that he needed to make clear. My last name is Dexter, not Harder. The name was used because it avoided complicated explanations when Mother married Harold Harder. My Dexter relatives hated the idea. Roddy and I have talked about it, and we want to and will sometime change it back to Dexter.

Stopping the car by the street-light in front of my house, he tightened his hands on the steering wheel, turned to me, and said, You are going to think this is awfully sudden and crazy, but when I was a boy, my mother told me, ‘Someday you will find your dream girl, and you’ll know it.’ Well, believe me I’ve looked around a lot, and you are that dream girl. Will you marry me?

We barely knew each other. Totally bowled over, I paused for a moment then said yes—forgetting for