I had an interesting start to the week followed by my regular monthly business trip to Yangon later in the week. The event that happened on Monday afternoon blew my mind as it reminded me of my participation in an institution that spanned the history of the founding of Singapore in 1819 till now.
I received a Facebook message from someone I did not know about a month ago which I finally read 2 weeks ago. It was a request for me to share materials that I may have from my school days with the resident persons in charge of the Raffles Archives who were looking to curate and preserve as much information they could get their hands on for a mega 200 years celebrations project which they have been working on.
I was lucky to have spent 6 years with one of the most dominant schools in Singapore. 4 years at Raffles Institution for my secondary school life (1979-82) and 2 more subsequently at Raffles Junior College (1983-84). This school was founded in 1823, shortly after the British empire claimed the island for itself during its colonial days.
The rich history the school had is actually a record of the history of this island state. Many well-known students have passed through its doors and the most famous to date is Lee Kuan Yew. The school recognized the importance of keeping a record of this and hence the Raffles Archives museum was formed. It aims to record and preserve the information and materials which can help tell its history for future generations.
This is where my story continues. I replied to the person that contacted me and he referred me to the person in charge. We communicated on email and I expressed my desire to donate the school yearbooks which I have faithfully kept over the years. I figured that they will treasure and preserve them much better than I can for years to come. They also requested for photos which I may have of the school which I subsequently submitted softcopies to them.
We agreed to meet up in order for me to pass them the yearbooks. We finally met at the museum itself on Monday. This was located within the school. The person in charge was much older than I thought. Cheryl was very passionate in her current role. She was a teacher at Raffles since 1990 and then asked to head this initiative in 2011. Both her sons and husband were also old boys of the school.
When we met on Monday afternoon, her assistant Mary had managed to even print my old school report card to present to me! We had used the digitized report cards for our class reunion 3 years ago, to print as door gifts for the participants. Little did I know then that this was the work of this team. Cleaners had wanted to throw away a roomful of documents many years back and the team discovered that they were actually RI report cards dating back to the 1970s! They then carefully digitized all the information to preserve them for future uses.
Cheryl then gave me a personal one on one tour of the museum. The rich history and what I saw really blew my mind. I felt so proud to have been able to be part of this institution and read about my predecessors. The artefacts that were kept gave me a glimpse of what life was like in the 19th and 20th centuries. Each had a story to tell and they have preserved that for the visitor to absorb.
I saw a well-preserved scout uniform dated back to 1940 in one of the glass cabinets. It was a son’s gift to the school when he was looking into his father’s belongings. What better way to remind him of his father’s legacy than to donate his treasured items to the Raffles Archives?
The tour experience was like walking back into time, hearing past students whispering into my ears their school experiences. The rich history reminds me to pay it forward for future generations of Rafflesians. I would definitely want to come back for another visit, hopefully with my older son who had also graduated from the same school in 2017.
They are currently working on a project to record the short 2 years history where the junior college was housed in a temporary location in Paterson road while the new campus was being built. My batch was the unique group that spent our first year there and then moved to the new campus on our 2nd year.
They had planned to commission a painting montage of Paterson which an old boy had agreed to do. The problem was that most of the photos of that campus were only in black and white images. They needed colour photos to help with the accuracy of the painting. They were also planning for the big 200th-anniversary celebrations of Raffles that will occur in 2023.
As a follow-up action, I agreed to reach out to others in my network to see if they may have old colour photos of Paterson. Since then, I have posted the request on the relevant FB groups which we had used for our reunion organization. I have also requested via another Whatsapp lifeguards group chat which had my seniors who were the only batch the spent 2 full years in Paterson. Hopefully, some materials might turn up.
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