Ultimate Eagles: Local Legends Abe and Jolly Abraham

Inspiring teachers, path-breaking colleagues, and Ultimate Eagles

As two of the first local teachers to join Singapore American School, Abe and Jolly Abraham proved pivotal hires for a young school facing a staffing crisis. Over the next three decades, this dynamic duo, who taught for a combined 70 years at SAS, would influence generations of children, enhance staff professionalism and diversity, and push SAS toward a more equitable partnership with its local employees.

Finding Qualified Teachers for a Growing School

Having welcomed its first students in 1956, SAS was soon facing challenges caused by rapidly increasing enrollment. In the school’s first few years, Principal Al Fisher and 10 teachers—all what we would now call “trailing spouse” expatriate mothers who were paid very little—managed to teach classes and, with significant parent volunteer help, complete all the other necessary school-day tasks. However, with enrollment nearly tripling by 1959, it was clear that hiring practices would have to evolve. Especially in the high school, SAS needed teachers with knowledge, training, and expertise in specific disciplines.

Mr. and Mrs. Abraham were my favorite teachers. They both had a way of teaching that would make you smarter while having fun at the same time. I’m very grateful to have had them in my life.

In 1959, math teacher “Abe” Kunnumpurathu Abraham was hired. His wife, Jolly Kutty Abraham, was hired in 1960 to teach science. The Abrahams were part of the school’s first group of locally hired educators, most of whom ended up staying at SAS for decades. These teachers immediately improved the school’s professionalism and then provided continuity and institutional memory through periods of significant change. They also paved the way for generations of Singaporean hires; today, around 20 SAS teachers and nearly all instructional assistants and non-teaching staff are local hires. These valued employees not only tend to have longer tenures at SAS than expatriate staff, they also provide diversity that benefits students, and they offer a window into Singapore’s culture and society for the whole community.

Of course, the cultural lessons can go both ways. The history book of SAS, Singapore’s Eagles, notes that Abe, who passed away in 2011, enjoyed recounting his very first classroom experience at SAS. Walking into the room, he was amazed that the students remained seated—in Singapore’s local schools, they would have jumped to their feet. He wondered whether they were being disrespectful because he was Asian, but later the principal walked in and the students did not stand for him, either. At that moment, Abe realized that he was in a very different type of school!

The Long Road to SAS and Beyond

Abe and Jolly Abraham both grew up in India and completed their first degrees there: Abe held a bachelor’s of science in mathematics from Kerala University and Jolly earned a bachelor’s of science in biology from Fatima Mata University in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Abe arrived in Singapore alone and took a job at Tanjong Katong Girls’ School. He soon returned to India to choose his bride in an arranged marriage. According to their daughter, Susheela Abraham (Varghese) (class of 1976), the two young teachers were actually fifth cousins, so the families already knew each other. “I have seen pictures of my mother with her future sisters-in-law when they were teenagers,” she shares. “My father chose Jolly Kutty because he said she had excellent facial features!” Once they were both in Singapore, Jolly first took a job at Saint Thomas Secondary School.

After moving to SAS and teaching there for nearly a decade, the Abrahams took part in an exchange program that SAS had developed with the Montgomery County school system in Maryland, USA. “We lived outside Washington DC as a family from 1967 to 1969,” recalls Susheela. “One year, my father taught mathematics at Winston Churchill High School and my mother was the student doing coursework. The next year, they switched places, and my mother taught while my father studied.” Both Jolly and Abe received master’s degrees in education from American University in 1970. Rather than traveling directly back to Singapore, Abe and Jolly seized the opportunity to take their children on a whistlestop trip of around a dozen cities in Europe, Turkey, and Egypt before returning home.

“Both Mr. and Mrs. A. were truly wonderful,” reads one recollection. “They wanted us to not only learn, but do well and succeed in life—they cared about their students.”

Inspiring Educators

From the 1960s to the 1990s, both Abe and Jolly inspired their high school students to strive for academic excellence and joy in learning. Abe taught math classes, including Algebra, Geometry, Calculus, and Trigonometry; he also taught physics and offered some of the school’s first computer science instruction in the 1970s. Students remember him as strict yet approachable, a teacher who “made all math simple” while also instructing students how to pronounce “Himalayas” correctly and using Sanskrit to indicate unknowns in equations. Long before SAS math teachers switched to new instructional methods that emphasize critical thinking over just reaching a correct answer, Abe was doing precisely that. One former student noted, “It was thanks to Mr. Abraham that I ended up doing a degree in mathematics—he firmly yet gently pushed me to the next level of understanding, thinking, and problem-solving, rather than doing things by rote.”

Jolly taught courses across the life sciences, including Biology and AP Biology, Botany, Zoology, and Physiology. One of her favorite sayings was, “You must think like a scientist!” After her passing in January 2024, former students and colleagues shared memories of her high standards and extraordinary care for students. They described her as “patient,” “kind,” “encouraging,” “affirming,” “understanding,” “fair,” “witty,” “awesome,” and “a class act.” At a time when girls were often discouraged from pursuing what we now call STEM subjects, Jolly was clearly a positive role model; many of her female students credit careers in medicine and the sciences to her mentorship. Other alumni recall her preference for wearing beautiful saris at all times and her compassion when students felt squeamish during dissections. “Both Mr. and Mrs. A. were truly wonderful,” reads one recollection. “They wanted us to not only learn, but do well and succeed in life—they cared about their students.”

Unionizing Local Staff Members

A final way in which the Abrahams’ hiring was to have profound effects on SAS was in the area of labor relations. By the early 1970s, it was clear that serious financial inequities had developed between the remuneration packages of overseas-hired versus local-hired staff. Abe was at the forefront of efforts to organize a union to address this. “He was the founding chairperson,” former educators Nat and Rose Bava remember, “while Atma Singh was the secretary of the union. Both held the position for two decades before stepping down.” Susheela remembers “endless meetings”at the family home, during which her mother always made one union representative go outside to pursue his chain-smoking habit. These SAS pioneers found that the Singapore Teachers' Union would not accept the school’s employees, as they worked in an international school, so the union was first formed under the Singapore Manual Mercantile Workers’ Union; later, it was transferred to the Education Services Union (ESU), where it remains today.

“As a union leader, I saw that, to Abe, the battles were over more than dollars and cents and contracts. They were over questions of fairness, truth, and integrity. An important lesson was that sometimes we have to fight to preserve our principles.”

– Jim Baker (class of 1976) and former SAS teacher

“My father felt very strongly that Singaporean teachers who had the same qualifications and quality of experience as expatriate teachers should receive commensurate salaries,” recalls Susheela. “He also knew the local staff such as administrative staff, nurses, instructional aides, lab technicians, computer assistants, security guards, and cleaners were not receiving all the benefits they could be entitled to.” At the time, the union justified its efforts to the broader community by asserting that greater fairness in compensation would help SAS recruit excellent staff, and over time this has proved accurate. In recent years, SAS has twice been recognized as one of Singapore’s top-20 employers by The Straits Times, and Superintendent Tom Boasberg received a Medal of Commendation during the government’s 2024 May Day Awards. This recent award was nominated by the ESU in recognition of the school’s “commitment to the well-being of the local faculty and staff,” as evidenced by its establishment of extensive professional development and financial aid opportunities for them.

Both Susheela and her brother Sunil (class of 1975) attended SAS, although their younger sister Sumeena was unable to do so as Singapore changed its rules around citizens attending international schools. Susheela recalls the unusual situation of having both parents as her teachers, sometimes one right after the other: “My mother said she could always tell if I had understood what had been covered in my father’s Introductory Analysis class by the look on my face as I entered her class!” She also recalls that, although her parents were always careful to keep tests locked up at school, friends sometimes asked if she had any inside information. “How annoyed I felt to have students suggest that I had any advantages!” she says. “If anything, I think my parents bent over backwards to be absolutely objective.” In the end, like so many SAS students over so many years, Susheela feels she was fortunate to learn from them for one main reason: “The privilege of being in their classes came because they were excellent teachers.”