Albert Horace DeWitt Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory - Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the beloved's bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)

 

A Tribute to Albert Horace DeWitt

(By Dorothy DeWitt)
August 1999

I am going to present a brief biography of my daddy who moulded my character and made me who I am now, Daddy how much I love you but never bothered to tell.

Daddy was born on the 30th of September 1922 in Pulau Tikus, Penang. Named Albert Horace DeWitt, he was called Horace by those who knew him. Grandpa or 'Dada' as he called his father, was working with the Singer Sewing Machine Company and was posted to Malacca where Daddy spent the rest of his days.

Teck Chai Avenue, with quaint brick houses, must have been the most modern houses in the area during the thirties. Daddy grew up there, swimming in the sea at Limbongan; climbing trees with the Malay boys in the Kampongs (village).

School was a good 5 km walk away, but if you're lucky, you can hitch a ride on a bullock-cart. He graduated with a GCE O-level certificate - which made him a highly educated Malaysian then but .. the war broke out then.

World War Two in Malaya brought hunger and fear. Horace used to plant his own tapioca and vegetables. When the Japanese occupied Malaya and 'banana money' was used, Horace joined the Japanese voluntary reserve. He patrolled the Limbongan and Kelebang beaches as well as boiled hot water for his officers to bathe in.

One ocassion during the war, he was brought in for questioning on suspicion of owning a radio set used to receive British propaganda. George DeWitt's mother who was Japanese, herself went to the camps to beg for his release - not before he had been beaten up. However, things might have got worse, if he had been tortured.

The end of the Japanese occupation, the British came back to Malaya. I know Daddy was in the Dutch East Indies Company, traveling to Batavia and the other Indonesian islands. Accordingly, he was supposed to be sent for further studies in engineering in Holland, but he had to return to Malacca after my grandmother had an illness - which was feigned. He then remained in Malacca. He was working with his father in the Singer Sewing Machine Company when he met my mother. She later got a job teaching embroidery in Singer Sewing Machine. They were married on the 10th May 1952. He was in the Reserve Police in Singapore and in the accounts department at Shaw Brothers, Singapore. Then bad times came for him and my father had to resort to farming on infertile swampy soil leased by the State Government - which was a disaster with loss of money and the sheep he reared died because of the damp conditions. Giving up meant great loss of money, face and spirit but continuing only meant immediate disaster. He gave up.

When I was born on 21st July 1962, my parents who had been married 10 years were overjoyed, naming me God's gift and 5 years after me on the 9th June 1967, my brother Dennis was born. I remember my childhood days were happy days. However, there were times when we had to be left alone, waiting for my parents to come home in the evenings after doing business. My father never stinged on the children's nutrition. Even though we didn't have much expensive food, I remember we always had Bovril and honey. And Daddy was inclined towards learning about medicine, which I believed I inherited, having an interest in human biology too.

Daddy also gave me the gift of knowledge, buying me an encyclopedia which cost close to a thousand dollars at that time - and I admit I grew up on those volumes of the encyclopedia. Maybe that made me what I am now too. Things like education cost a lot, but my father never gave up on it. He wanted the best for his children and sacrificed for us so many times. He tried to make ends meet but we never knew about it. Somehow, he was always able to give us our daily pocket money and pay for our school books.

I remember the nights we used to cuddle with him and listen to his bedtime stories on Sang Kancil's exploits and funny anecdotes such as how roast pork was discovered.

He was always stressed and worried about everything. Maybe he was too kind or not forceful enough, but he was cheated many times in his life. Money was always a problem. When he died, we were just beginning to get settled in our careers. There wasn't time to let him enjoy life but at least he managed to fly from Penang to Kuala Lumpur and go for short holidays with me. And when I was planning for a cruise to East Malaysia, he became seriously ill. He had a degenerative heart disease. Form then on he deteriorated. In the early morning of January 13th, 1994, I was about 6 weeks pregnant with Christine, my second child, he passed away in the Malacca General Hospital, after being transferred for the Malacca Specialist Center, and removed from I.C.U. and the ventilator. He was supposed to be transferred that very morning to I.J.N., a heart specialist centre in Kuala Lumpur, but it wasn't God's will. He died alone, much to the grief and guilt of my mother.

It was God's will I supposed. He had a hard life - right to the end. I only regret that I did not have the power to make his life better.

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