鴛鴦夫婦だった二人。
出会いは学生のころからで、
優秀な二人は奨学金を争うほどでした。
そのころから、お互い意識していたといわれています。
その後第二次世界大戦を経てケンブリッジ大学へお互い留学。
結婚は留学先で秘密裏に行われました。
当時、リー・クワン・ユー24歳。奥様27歳。
その後、シンガポールの独立から今まで、
リー・クワン・ユーを支え続けてきた奥様でした。
以下、英文ですがYahooニュースに載っていた記事より。
Madam Kwa Geok Choo
– wife of Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew
and mother of PM Lee Hsien Loong
– has died on Saturday at the age of 89.
She passed away peacefully at home at 5.40 pm.
Last month, MM Lee revealed that his companion of 61 years
— they have been together since they were law students
in London – had been bedridden for the last two years
and has been uable to speak or move.
He had shared that his most difficult moment is at the end of
each day as he sits by the bedside of his wife.
“She understands when I talk to her, which I do every night,”
he said.
“She keeps awake for me; I tell her about my day’s work,
read her favourite poems.”
“I told her, ‘I would try and keep you company for
as long as I can,”
before adding,
“I’m not sure who’s going first, whether she or me.”
Madam Kwa was one of 8 children.
Channel News Asia reports that she was a brilliant student
at Methodist Girls’ School, topping the 1936
Senior Cambridge Examination for the whole of
Malaya and Singapore.
At Raffles Institution, she caught the attention of
a young Lee Kuan Yew when she gave him unexpectedly
stiff competition for a Queen’s Scholarship.
Their relationship grew through the Japanese Occupation
and by 1944, love had truly blossomed and set
in between the two.
Mr Lee left to study law in England in 1946 after
World War II and his then sweetheart joined him
at Cambridge University a year later.
The two married secretly on 23 December 1947
after she had just turned 27, and he was 24.
Mrs Lee said: “You can’t explain these things …
He had tremendous aplomb,
self-confidence, very jaunty,
he was a handsome young man.”
When they returned to Singapore in 1950,
they tied the knot again,
this time with their parents’ full knowledge.
When Mr Lee got more involved in politics and
became Singapore’s Prime Minister in 1959,
Mrs Lee and her brother-in-law, Lee Kim Yew,
founded the Lee & Lee law firm in 1955.
The Lees have two sons and one daughter.
Her eldest son is Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s
current Prime Minister
while her second son is Lee Hsien Yang,
chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority of
Singapore or CAAS.
Her daughter is Lee Wei Ling, head of Singapore’s
National Neuroscience Institute.
In October 2003 — Mrs Lee suffered a stroke
while on a visit to London but she made a swift recovery.
Although she had shied away from a high profile,
her contributions to Singapore had been most significant,
and pivotal to its history.
MM Lee said, “If she weren’t an influence,
supposing I had married somebody else,
I might have become a different person,
not that I would be a different person,
but the things that I would have been able to do,
the kind of backdrop I would have had, family,
support, would have been different.”
A statement from the Prime Minister’s Office said
her wake will be held at Sri Temasek –
official residence of the Prime Minister located within
the Istana grounds
— on Monday and Tuesday from 10am to 5pm.
A private funeral will take place on October 6 at
Mandai Crematorium.
The family requests that no obituaries and
no wreaths or flowers to be sent.
(参照:http://sg.yfittopostblog.com/2010/10/02/mrs-lee-kuan-yew-dies-aged-89/
)
Mdm Kwaのご冥福と、ご家族の慰めをお祈り申し上げます。