September 4, 2009: On the last day of Homecoming Spirit Week, we had two fun visitors who were able to not only chat with their former teachers, but also see the homecoming spirit that has been all over the school. The students were dressed in their finest Eagles spirit gear, and energy was running high. Our first visitor was Won Hee Lee '98, better known as Winnie Lee during the three years she was here from 1994-1997.

 

Winnie and her father Mr. Lee were in town with Winnie's older sister June Lee '97, who was in Singapore on a business trip. They had a great time walking around the new parts of the building. Winnie spent one year on the Woodlands campus, and two years at King's Road. She was active in SAS Singers, Tri-M and NHS, and so she was pleased to see Mrs. Silverman in her office, where she also saw photos and performance posters from her time at SAS.

 

 

She also visited with Mr. Adams, Mr. Cox Azizah Sultan, Mr. and Mrs. Ho and Mrs. Melsom. She's headed back to Korea this weekend, where she works in marketing for Proctor & Gamble. Thanks for coming by Winnie!

 

Alumni mom Heather Presnail greeted Nick Vargish '87, and showed him the new parts of the high school. The entire school was new to Nick, who went from grades 1-12 at Ulu Pandan and King's Road.

 

Nick and Winnie stopped to chat in front of the high school principal's office, and although there are ten years between them, they found that they had memories of the same teachers, including Mr. Hurst, Mrs. Kuester, Mr. Imperi and Mr. Cox.

 

Nick was interested to see the younger grades as well, as he and his wife have two children in elementary school in Maryland. He works for the government in the Washington, D.C. area, but he'd love to move his family to Singapore. Nick chatted with teacher Jim Baker for 45 minutes during his lunch break, and was pleased that Mr. Baker still had the gruff wit and wry sense of humor he remembered. We hope to see Nick and his family back in Singapore soon.

 

Later that same afternoon, Bill Bolm and his wife Janet visited SAS with their Singaporean friends Rodney and Leila. Bill was a coach at SAS during the 1969-1970 school year, and he still had fond memories of the school and his students. We looked through the yearbooks, and he recognized several alums. We encouraged him to sign up on this alumni website, so that he could get back in touch with the athletes he remembered so fondly.

 

Bill and Janet live in Minnesota near their three children, and made the trip back to Singapore to celebrate the opening of a new church building in Malaysia. Bill came to Singapore in the 1960s as a Lutheran missionary, and has stayed in touch with the Lutheran church on Queensway ever since. Bill, Janet, Rodney and Leila very much enjoyed seeing the campus, especially the sports facilities and the Memory Garden. 

 

UPDATE On October 1, 2009, Bill wrote: Thanks again for the great tour while we visited SAS. You guys do a great job! I gave the alumni baseball cap to Rev. John Nelson. His family is the one that you did a feature story on. I think they had a total of 70 combined years at SAS. He was happy to get the cap; he deserved it. I think he was on the school board etc... Great guy!! Great missionary! His wife spent a lifetime in India and Singapore. Super family! I am anxious to see if any of the 1970 players (basketball or baseball) are registered on the alumni website. Also, hope Kazinathan (other boys coach) is registered. We had a great time and had great kids to work with...Needless to say, the facilities have changed. That was the first year that we got an indoor gym. I think that was the only one in town at the time.

 

September 23, 2009: Karen Schaetzl '95 visited today. Karen was just a tiny girl when she attended SAS in the early 80s for Pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and first grade at Ulu Pandan, but the experience was a great one for her. She remembers Mrs. D'Aranjo and several other of her teachers from that time, and even visited the Ulu Pandan campus and her family's former home at Pandan Valley while she was in town. The Ulu Pandan buildings still stand, and are now housing Emaar International School.

 

Karen is now living in Shanghai, where she is completing an internship in counseling at the Shanghai Community International School, where her partner is a high school science teacher. She recently moved to Shanghai from Chicago, where she was in a completely different field. She is enjoying the career change, and loves the day to day interaction with her students. While at SAS, she enjoyed visiting the high school and the counseling office, to see how things are organized at SAS, a much bigger school than SCIS, which has about 500 students. After leaving us, she was off to visit Tioman for two days of sun and relaxation on the beach before heading back to busy Shanghai.

 

September 29, 2009: Today we had a very special visitor: Yenly Thach, 26, a Cambodian-American pursuing her masters at the University of California-Santa Barbara, is not an SAS alum, but she has a connection to Kendra Payne '02, an alum whose memory we celebrate on the Timeline Wall in the Memory Garden. Kendra was killed in 2006 while doing cycling training for a triathlon. Kendra's memory and her love for sports is celebrated at SAS with an annual biathlon in her name. Yenly has been awarded the Kendra Payne Memorial Foundation Scholarship established by Kendra's parents, Rick and Patricia Chiota Payne. You can read more of Yenly's story here.

 

Yenly was on her way to start a six-month research project in Cambodia, and had a short stopover in Singapore. Having met Kendra's parents several times, Yenly was keen to learn more about Singapore and about Kendra's life at SAS. We arranged for Yenly to meet Therese Vainius '11 and Ted Chritton '10, both powerful athletes and last year's winners of the Kendra Payne Memorial Biathlon.

 

Yenley also met with Athletic Director Mimi Molchan, who runs the biathlon each year and fondly remembers Kendra and her love for sports. Ms. Molchan tells Kendra's story to all the biathlon participants each year, and says that it is quite an emotional event for the participants. She was pleased to meet Yenly, who is carrying on another one of Kendra's passions: helping women in developing countries. Yenly and Ms. Molchan pose with Communications Director Beth Gribbon, who very kindly opened her home to Yenly during her two day visit to Singapore. The three ladies are pictured next to Kendra's memorial plaque in the SAS Memory Garden. Yenly loved Kendra's quote, picked out by Kendra's parents: "If anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart." She felt that it was something she lived by as well.

 

Our last stop with Yenly was to meet two special freshman at SAS, Rathana and Cherry Amelio. These ladies joined SAS in middle school. They had attended one of the Amelio schools in rural Cambodia, and joined the Amelio family in Singapore, where they will stay at SAS until they graduate. Both Rathana and Cherry are very involved at SAS, and getting used to the different rigors and pace of the high school. They were eager to hear about Yenly's story, and were surprised when they realized that she was Cambodian, but had never been to Cambodia. Yenly was very impressed with both girls, and said she imagined they'd have a very bright future. As they left the high school office, all three agreed to keep in touch via facebook. Yenly's visit reminded us just how interconnected the world is. Thank you for visiting Yenly, and for celebrating Kendra's spirit through your research in Cambodia. We'll continue to celebrate her memory here too!