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| TAN LARK SYE'S
LAST GIFT TO NANTAH |
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| Professor Teh Hoon Heng, 29 August 2000 | |||
I am sure many Nantah graduates do not know that the founder of Nantah Mr. Tan Lark Sye gave Nantah a large gift even after the reorganization of Nantah and losing his citizenship. Here is a simple but moving story telling the big heart of a great man. I came back to serve Nantah the second time in 1966 after the reorganization of Nantah. One day I met a Nantah council member Mr. Ng, who was very close to Mr. Tan Lark Sye. I asked him about Mr. Tan after a Nantah council meeting. He told me that Mr. Tan was fine but quite lonely because he had very few visitors these days. I asked Mr. Ng whether it was good for me to pay Mr. Tan a visit. Mr. Ng said yes and was sure Mr.Tan would be happy to see that I had come back to serve Nantah. So Mr. Ng made arrangement for the visit. I visited Mr. Tan together with Mr. Ng the next Sunday night at Mr.Tan's Millionaire Club at East Coast Road. It was a very memorable meeting. In fact Mr.Tan was not as upset as I thought of the reorganization of Nantah. He was still very concern about Nantah and asked me how the Nantah graduates were doing overseas. After that meeting I made an effort to visit Mr. Tan quite regularly once every two to three weeks keeping him informed of the progress of Nantah as well as the good news of Nantah graduates studying overseas. Some meetings were short lasting about 10 to 15 minutes and some were longer when Mr. Tan asked me to have dinner with him. That went on for several months. One night after a dinner meeting before I left, Mr. Tan advised me not to come any more because he knew that I was very busy. He then said he wanted to give Nantah a last gift and asked me to suggest. Of course I did not know what to say. To me, Mr. Tan had already given Nantah so many, many gifts before. Without his tremendous contributions to Nantah, there would not be a Nantah today. Suddenly Mr. Tan recalled something and asked me how was the new Nantah Auditorium. Was it completed? Was it being used? I then told him that the new Nantah Auditorium was only 80% completed and it would need quite a bit of additional work to make it usable. Mr. Tan then said he would look into this matter. A week later, the Bursar of Nantah Mr.Chai received a telephone call from the secretary of a large organization in Singapore asking Mr.Chai to give him an estimate how much would it cost to complete the construction of Nantah Auditorium making it a first class auditorium. Mr.Chai was very excited and told me about the telephone message. I then told Mr. Chai privately that the request was from Mr. Tan through that large organization. The rest of the story is now history. Nantah Auditorium did indeed become a first class auditorium. I was told by Mr.Chai that the total cost to complete the auditorium with everything including furnishing with chairs, lighting, sound system, etc was nearly half a million dollars. Nobody knows who actually paid the bill. But to me and Mr. Chai, it was without doubt a gift from Mr. Tan Lark Sye. It was his last gift and was a big and timely gift! Since then all the Nantah convocations were held at the Nantah Auditorium. All the important large scale lectures including the speeches by SM Lee were also held at the Auditorium. Many Nantah students remembered Nantah Auditorium because of the popular Friday Movie Nights watching two movies for a dollar organized by Nantah student societies. A student society could easily raise $500 to $800 by simply booked the auditorium rental free and ran a movie night. So everyone was happy. Even the villagers living nearby happily enjoyed the Nantah Friday Movie Nights. Such were the happy days of the old Nantah! I decided to write this part of the history of Nantah because this is just one of the many, many simple but moving stories about old Nantah telling us the many, many big hearts of great men who contributed to Nantah most unselfishly! Home |