Farewell to three old friends

Three old friends passed away within six days - Yeoh Eng Hin, Thomas Khor and Lee Keat Heng - all coming as a shock to me. 

It's no fun living to be 100 when you are frail of mind and body. But it is still an immense achievement and for that, I applaud Yeoh Eng Hin to have lived until this ripe old age. This senior Life Member of The Old Frees' Association passed away on 12 April having attained this centenarian landmark. Frailty of body was a definite given but I do not know whether it had affected him in any other way as I had not met Yeoh in the last few decades of his life. In the 1970s, I used to be a frequent visitor to his record shop, known as Hinson, in Penang Road. I used to spend hours browsing through the interesting records he had stocked up.

Another OFA Life Member that passed away this week, on the 15th, was Thomas Khor, my old class teacher from the Westlands Primary School. Eighty-six years old when he died, I was taught by him exactly 60 years ago in Standard Five. For many years we lost touch but happened to reconnect after 2012 when I was starting work on Let the Aisles Proclaim. He was from Ipoh but at the time during or after the Japanese Occupation, his family made their way to Penang. He was a devout Catholic but instead of enrolling in St Xavier's Institution, he somehow found himself in Penang Free School. With some old school friends, we took him to revisit the old Westlands Primary School which today is a centre for sports excellence. Thomas Khor loved that visit and I could see his old familiar, spritely swagger return to his steps. He walked the length of the main building, climbed the stairs to the upper floor and peeked into the old classrooms. My last time seeing him was in the middle of last year at the New World Park food court. He was there with one of his sons, enjoying a meal when my friends and I spied him. And naturally, I went up to say hello. Old teachers must be appreciated. We grow up to become their friends.

Yesterday too, I learnt of the passing of Lee Keat Heng on the 17th. He was another Life Member of The Old Frees' Association. Understandably shocked by this news as only on Monday he was celebrating his 70th birthday. He was my classmate from Primary schooldays. Both of us had been placed in Standard 1E at Westlands but we parted company come the following year. Although we did not know one another very well as I went into an express class and he did not, the parting of ways could not hide the fact that Lee was one of my oldest school friends. We only began touching base again after the Free School's Bicentenary celebrations.