A Tribute to Mr Charlie Tan Kim Hock, My Father
by Mr Ronnie Tan, New Life BPC

What was my father like? What was he like as a member of New Life B-P Church? What was he as he like as a husband and grandfather? This tribute to the late Mr Charlie Tan Kim Hock, my father, would hopefully answer these questions. It is also my hope that this tribute to him would be a blessing to those who read it as well as be challenged by it. Should you, the reader, find this tribute a little long-winded, please accept my apologies because a short tribute to my father would never do justice to such a wonderful and loving man who spoke far better with his actions than with his words. 

Mr Charlie Tan came to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ at the age of 72. He prayed the sinner’s prayer with my wife Janet and I at the void deck of his home in Clementi. Thank God that he was spared the horror of a Christ-less eternity on at least two occasions. He suffered a heart attack in 1975 while in hospital but somehow managed to squeeze the alarm button that got the medical staff of Alexandra Hospital to attend to him in the nick of time. The second attack in 1989 saw him coming within 20 minutes of a Christ-less eternity. I thank God that He spared my father then so that my father still had time to come to the saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ in mid-1997. He later expressed his wish that he be baptized together with our daughter, Amayniah; a wish God so graciously granted him in Easter 1998. 

1.       Pa the Family Man 

A brother-in-Christ recently shared with me how good and loving fathers were hard to come by. He shared how his father practically neglected the family and was more concerned about his friends than his family. He went on to share how it was his mother who brought him and his brother up while his father was hardly home. A former colleague of mine related how his opium-addict father would spend time in the opium dens, gamble away whatever money he earned and even stole some of the family heirloom to finance his drug habit and left his wife to raise up five children all on her own. All praise and glory should go to God for having blessed us with a loving and responsible man to be a husband, father, father-in-law and grandfather. Even before he came to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, Pa had no vices. As an aunt of mine testified, he had never smoked a cigarette all his life! Even gambling on 4-digit lottery was something foreign to him! Neither did he know how to womanize, drink, indulge in other forms of gambling or beat up Ma despite the occasional arguments that were quite common in all marriages. 

We have often heard of fathers who were distant, aloof and virtually unapproachable. Happily for us, Pa did not fit this image. He made no attempt to hide his love and affection for his loved ones. He was so very approachable that all of us need not approach him with fear and trembling. Apart from being a warm and approachable man, Pa combined these traits very effectively with unsparing doses of humour. Pa’s easy-going and jovial personality never ceased to endear him to his loved ones, relatives and friends. 

Pa never wanted to be a burden to his family, especially his children, even before he accepted the Lord Jesus as his Saviour. When he went on travels overseas, he never insisted that his children give him money for his daily expenses. He could have done that, especially when all of his children were working by then but he chose not to. He would only accept them if we took the initiative to give him some pocket money. Even then, he would only accept token amounts and tried to limit his spending. In other words, he never treated his children as the proverbial geese that laid golden eggs for him, unlike some fathers I was aware of. 

When his children and grandchildren were working, Pa also never asked us openly for allowances to be given to him. When I got my first pay-packet, my lack of initiative meant that I somehow did not give Pa any allowance. It took a gentle reminder from Ma that I should at least give Pa $50 per month. How thoughtless of me! Yet, despite my thoughtlessness, Pa never made a song and dance about it. The joy on his face was apparent when he received the small token of $50 from me later. Years later, after I graduated from university and got my first pay packet after that, I thought that it was time that Pa got the same amount as what Ma got. When I gave him the allowance, he told me, “Son, you don’t have to give me so much. $50 is more than enough for me. You should give the rest of my intended share to your mother.” Thank God, for such a loving, selfless father! Apparently, he told my two other siblings something similar too. I was aware of some fathers who demanded equal amounts from their children and would not hesitate to complain to others if they did not get what they felt was rightfully theirs. However, I truly thank God that Pa was not like that. Being the simple, thrifty man that he was, Pa chose to let Ma have more as he knew that she was a capable of manager of the family’s finances and that she needed the money to meet the household expenses. 

As noted in the preceding paragraph, Pa only wanted no more than $50 from me. When my daughter Amayniah was born in April 1997, you could see the joy on his face. Up to the time the Lord called him home on 16 Feb 2002, Pa was always giving Amayniah $5 per week as a gift of love and for her savings. To do this, Pa made a special effort to acquire plastic bags of a certain size, put $5 worth of coins in them, rolled them up properly and even stapled or scotch-taped them before giving them to Amayniah. Should he miss giving her the money on a certain Sunday, he always made up for it the following week. In other words, a sizeable part of the allowance I gave him went to the granddaughter he doted on.  

Indeed, Pa’s love for children was well-known among his relatives. An aunt of mine testified that when his nephews and nieces were much younger, he would always play with them when he met them. He had also lamented that his two older grandchildren were raised in Malacca and hence, had little time to develop close bonds with him until they came down to study and work in Singapore a few years ago.  

When Janet and I moved to Woodlands in Jan 1999, we needed a family member to come and stay with us so as to help keep an eye on our domestic helper. Pa did not hesitate to stay with us when we approached him to be our extra minder, even if it meant being separated from Ma. Being the easy-going and lovable person that he was, Pa settled in and he got along well with all three of us, during which time he developed an even closer bond with Amayniah. After moving back to Clementi, he would frequently call to enquire about her and asked us to bring his granddaughter to Clementi regularly as he missed her terribly. On Sundays, whenever he was with us in church, he would always look for her so that he could shower his affection on her. 

It was Pa’s love and concern for me that saw me being led to Christ. When I was young, Pa noticed that I was rather lonely but he was not keen to let me mix around with the kids in the neighbourhood who would have generally been a bad influence on me. He got in touch with Rev. James Chan’s wife (our former next-door neighbour from Bukit Timah Village who attended Calvary-Jurong) and asked what could be done to ensure that I was in the right company. It proved to be the right move and I have never looked back since. To top it all, Pa even encouraged me to go to church even though he was not a Christian back then. How many non-Christian parents back then would encourage their children to go to church when they themselves were not Christians?  Yet here was a then non-Christian who had no qualms about his child going to church regularly. Thank God indeed for such a father! 

For me personally, what I would always cherish most about Pa was that he took great pride in my achievements. I could always count on his unwavering support and encouragement in whatever tasks I set out to achieve. He was always the first in my family to take notice of any of my achievements. No achievement of mine was too small for him to feel proud about. For instance, when I passed my Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE), he sought his brother’s help in acquiring books that would broaden my intellectual horizon. Passing my ‘O’, ‘A’, and university exams also saw him beaming with pride. Such was his pride in my achievements that he would inform his relatives about them without hesitation whenever he talked about me. When he found out that I was helping to take photos in church, he would also mention it to his relatives.  

I should also mention other ways Pa showed his love for me that touched me deeply. Those acts served to reinforce my belief that I could not have asked for a better, more loving man to bring me up. I was 12 years old and my sister and her friend wanted to give me a birthday present. I told them I wanted a carrom board as I was beginning to take an interest in the game. Pa took it upon himself to buy the board. Those days, we were not so well-off and there was no MRT. The only way to get to town was by bus. Pa took the bus down to town to select a good quality board which cost $24.50 (a hefty sum in those days) and carried the heavy, bulky board all the way home from town by bus. Being the thrifty father that he was, Pa could have taken the taxi back but he chose not to. When he reached home, he even polished it and gave it a new coat of varnish to ensure that the playing surface was smooth.   

Pa was already in his evening years by the time he started going to church with my family. Since we did not drive then, we would take the bus to church on Sundays. On numerous occasions, even when there was a seat available on a crowded bus, Pa would offer it to me instead of taking it himself. Can you imagine a man in his mid-seventies (who has lost more than half his visual abilities and growing frail) offering his healthy son in his thirties a seat on a crowded bus? Yet, here was a man who loved his son so much that he offered the seat to his son without the slightest hesitation. I can only say that such touching deeds could only come from a heart full of warmth and love. Each time I think of those occasions, my heart yearned for the father I no longer have with me now. With such wonderful experiences, I could better appreciate my Heavenly Father’s greater love me, even to the extent of sending His only begotten Son to die for me the death that He did not deserve at all. 

What was Pa like as a father-in-law? Pa was never a demanding father-in-law to both his late son-in-law and my wife. There was some interaction between him and my brother-in-law in view of the fact that the latter was living in Malacca. Pa interacted more with Janet. He was the first person in the family to give his approval for our relationship. Both of them got along very well from Day One. Such was the close bond between them that some members of the church initially thought that Janet was Pa’s daughter and I the son-in-law! In addition, Janet’s testimony as a filial and dutiful daughter-in-law so impressed Pa that he was moved to tell some relatives that he loved Janet as his own daughter. Thank God that the close relationship between them played an instrumental part in Pa’s salvation a short while after our marriage. 

2.       Pa the Father-Figure/Father-Away-From-Home 

Pa’s limitless reservoir of love was not confined to the family. Such was his love for others that he also became a father-figure to some of my cousins who had lost their fathers at a young age. A cousin of mine even told my sister that Pa was his favourite uncle and would purposely look him up and bring him out for meals whenever he knew Pa was in Malacca. The wife of another cousin also mentioned how Pa became like a father to her after her own father passed away a few years earlier. Pa was also a “father-away-from-home” to some of my Malaysian cousins working in Singapore. They truly respected him and enjoyed his company to the extent that they made it a point to visit him regularly.  

When Janet and I had a domestic helper some time ago, Pa never treated her as an outsider or as an inferior person. Pa always treated her with dignity and respect. Such was the respect reciprocated that to this day, our former domestic helper would constantly call up to enquire about Pa via the occasional trunk calls from Hong Kong where she was working. When she heard about Pa’s passing, she cried. 

3.       Pa the Faithful Christian 

As a Christian, Pa would come to church faithfully whenever he could. By the time he started attending church, he was already a diabetic, had a 22-year history of heart problems, and a failing eyesight. In fact, so bad was his eyesight that Bro. Clement Tan informed me that he had lost more than 50% of it. He could hardly see anything in one eye while he had tunnel-like vision in the other due to glaucoma. Yet the Lord preserved and kept him such that he could still come to church by public transport unscathed all the way from Clementi, especially when we had to bear in mind how difficult it was to cross the road in front of New Life BP Church on Sunday mornings.  A few days after he last came to worship the Lord on 13 Jan, he was already very weak. He needed 5 pints of blood to be transfused into him after he was admitted on 17 Jan. Such was his desire to come before the Lord in worship that some months before God called him home, he told me something to this effect, “I will still come to church so long as I am able to do so”. What sweet words from someone with failing eyesight and health who personified the meaning of Psalm 122:1! Yet, how sad it would be to realize that some able-bodied believers had no qualms about finding all sorts of excuses not to come to worship the Lord when some with failing health could still make the effort to come from a great distance! May Pa’s faithfulness to the Lord encourage us to be faithful to Him always! 

Pa was never perturbed that very few people would go up to talk to him or greet him after worship service. To the few who approached him, he always remembered their kindness to him. Otherwise, Pa would just sit and wait for my family to meet him and then go off either to Sunday School or home. How often have we heard of people dropping out of church just because they could not find friends or people to speak to and when they found the members “cold”? Pa’s continued presence in church up to 13 Jan 2001 was a reminder to all Christians that our main priority when we come to church should be to seek the Lord, not friends first. While fellowship among brethren was important, Pa’s faithfulness taught us that we should not let the failure of finding sweet fellowship be the cause for leaving or staying away from church.  

Prior to his surgery, I had a few opportunities to confirm his salvation. Each time I asked him if he believed in the Lord Jesus and still acknowledged Him as his Saviour, he said, “Yes”. Even as he lay dying in the Intensive Care Unit, I asked him a few times if he still had the Lord Jesus in his heart. Praise the Lord that each time, the answer was in the affirmative. I thank God that despite the great pain and discomfort that he was going through, he never stopped trusting in the Lord. May this lesson on faithfulness unto the end be always remembered and emulated. 

Conclusion 

            I had always dreaded the day Pa would no longer be us. Pa’s home-going would always leave a void in my life. He was not only a father to me but one of my best friends too. Life would never be the same without him around anymore.  

However, all is not doom and gloom. I can say with great joy and confidence that someday, we will meet again in Heaven as he is now safe in the arms of our loving Lord and Saviour. Indeed, I can never thank God enough for giving me the privilege of being brought up by an exceptional and exemplary father, who in his own quiet way, was the living example of Matt 5:16 to fellow believers. I thank God that He gave me opportunities that I actually grabbed to tell Pa that he was a very good and loving father. These opportunities came a few months before he left us for Heaven. I was glad I managed to let him know this or I would have regretted it for as long as I live. I will always treasure these sweet memories, as well as memories of the wonderful times we had together as a family. Dear God, thank you for Pa, his love, and the many lessons you taught us through him. Amen. 

Postscript 

Pa was called home on 16 Feb 02. He was warded on 17 Jan 02 as he was diagnosed to be suffering from first-stage colorectal cancer and bleeding heavily. The surgery was successful but Pa succumbed to two heart attacks subsequently.