They were inseparable.
She was his closest friend, his “tower of strength”, for more than three-quarters of his life.
At Raffles College, she had beaten him to be the top student in English and economics at the end of the first term, giving Lee stiff competition for the coveted Queen’s Scholarship.
With their friendship blossoming by September 1944, Lee Kuan Yew invited Kwa Geok Choo to his 21st birthday dinner, “an event not without significance” in those days.
In the months before he left in September 1946, they spent a lot of time together and took photographs.
Lee wrote in his memoirs: “We were young and in love, anxious to record this moment of our lives ... We both hoped she would go back to Raffles College, win the Queen’s Scholarship to read law and join me wherever I might be.
“She was totally committed. I sensed it. I was equally determined to keep my commitment to her.”
In 2003, in an e-mail interview with ST Senior Correspondent M Nirmala, Mrs Lee Kuan Yew said the qualities she admired most in Mr Lee was his powers of persuasion.
She said:
(a) He persuaded me to marry him, but I would have to wait for him for three years while he studied in England to qualify as a lawyer.
(b) He persuaded a British army officer to give him a priority passage on the troopship Britannic to get him to England.
(c) When he got to London, he persuaded Professor Hughes Parry, head of the Law Faculty of London School of Economics, to take him in two weeks after term had started, although he had turned others away.
(d) After a few miserable weeks in London, he persuaded W. S. Thatcher, the Censor of FitzWilliam House, Cambridge, to take him in one term late.
(e) When I was awarded the Queens Scholarship in July 1947, he persuaded W. S. Thatcher to write to the Mistress of Girton College about taking in his girlfriend, me.
(f) He met the Mistress and persuaded her that I was exceptional and worth taking in for that academic year.
(g) The Education Department in Singapore doubted that I had been offered a place in Girton College; they had not been able to get Eddie Barker a place in Cambridge even though he had won the Queens Scholarship the previous year (1946). Eddie did not get in till the following year. Kuan Yew persuaded Girton College to send a telegram to the Singapore authorities to confirm they would take me in 1947, and so they sent me to England in September that year.
So I did not have to wait three years before he married me.
In life, they were inseparable. In death, they were joined in their ashes according to their wishes.
She was his closest friend, his “tower of strength”, for more than three-quarters of his life.
At Raffles College, she had beaten him to be the top student in English and economics at the end of the first term, giving Lee stiff competition for the coveted Queen’s Scholarship.
With their friendship blossoming by September 1944, Lee Kuan Yew invited Kwa Geok Choo to his 21st birthday dinner, “an event not without significance” in those days.
In the months before he left in September 1946, they spent a lot of time together and took photographs.
Lee wrote in his memoirs: “We were young and in love, anxious to record this moment of our lives ... We both hoped she would go back to Raffles College, win the Queen’s Scholarship to read law and join me wherever I might be.
“She was totally committed. I sensed it. I was equally determined to keep my commitment to her.”
In 2003, in an e-mail interview with ST Senior Correspondent M Nirmala, Mrs Lee Kuan Yew said the qualities she admired most in Mr Lee was his powers of persuasion.
She said:
(a) He persuaded me to marry him, but I would have to wait for him for three years while he studied in England to qualify as a lawyer.
(b) He persuaded a British army officer to give him a priority passage on the troopship Britannic to get him to England.
(c) When he got to London, he persuaded Professor Hughes Parry, head of the Law Faculty of London School of Economics, to take him in two weeks after term had started, although he had turned others away.
(d) After a few miserable weeks in London, he persuaded W. S. Thatcher, the Censor of FitzWilliam House, Cambridge, to take him in one term late.
(e) When I was awarded the Queens Scholarship in July 1947, he persuaded W. S. Thatcher to write to the Mistress of Girton College about taking in his girlfriend, me.
(f) He met the Mistress and persuaded her that I was exceptional and worth taking in for that academic year.
(g) The Education Department in Singapore doubted that I had been offered a place in Girton College; they had not been able to get Eddie Barker a place in Cambridge even though he had won the Queens Scholarship the previous year (1946). Eddie did not get in till the following year. Kuan Yew persuaded Girton College to send a telegram to the Singapore authorities to confirm they would take me in 1947, and so they sent me to England in September that year.
So I did not have to wait three years before he married me.
In life, they were inseparable. In death, they were joined in their ashes according to their wishes.
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