The Family Issue
Family Ties As a school founded in 1925, Tanglin has generations of history behind it. Even so, it’s surprising to talk with Tanya Bird, a parent whose family connections with Tanglin go back more than 70 years Tanya’s daughters Tia and Olivia – who is due to graduate this summer – are the fourth generation of women in Tanya’s family to be connected to Tanglin. Tanya’s grandmother Valerie was a secretary to headmistress Muriel Mackay at the then Tanglin School, her mother Angela Bird, neé Fenwick, attended Tanglin School, and Tanya and her sister attended the Tanglin Trust-owned Raeburn Park School. When Tanya returned to Singapore 10 years ago, Tanglin was the obvious choice for her girls’ education, too. “I just have so many fond memories of those times,” she explains. “Sports Days, plays, taking the overnight train and long boats to Taman Negara, Malaysia, for a wilderness experience… Back then, there was no Senior School, so only my primary years were completed at Tanglin. But, they were very formative.” The family’s relationship with the school dates back to 1948, when Tanya’s mother Angela, who currently resides in Australia, first joined Tanglin at age three. Tanya’s grandfather worked for the Straits Steamship Company, while her grandmother Valerie was a cane furniture designer with her own business, Adrian’s Cane Furniture, located in a shophouse on the site of what is now the St Regis Hotel. Once Angela had enrolled at Tanglin, Valerie juggled this work alongside a part-time role as secretary to the school’s headmistress. Angela stayed in Singapore once her schooling was complete; Tanya was later born in Malaysia and went on to attend Raeburn Park School alongside her sister Lara. The family eventually left Singapore
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Sydney-born Olivia is Tanya’s youngest daughter; she will graduate from Tanglin this summer and head to Australia to begin her university degree. for the UK in the early 1980s, later emigrating to Australia when Tanya was 18. It seemed to the teen as though her time in Singapore had ended, but a conversation with her husband Tim years later would change that. “We were working crazy hours at the time, and juggling work and children, and our vision was to travel the world so the girls would have a sense of being a global citizen. Ultimately, we wanted them to have new experiences and adventures, and to make friends from different countries and cultures. So, we went where the wind blew us! We had recently returned to Australia from the UAE when Tim was offered a position here in Singapore and I began to think, ‘What if...?’”
Tanya had talked to her daughters many times about her time in Singapore, and that of her mother and grandmother – in fact, she is still in touch with several of her classmates from Nursery – so for Olivia and her sister Tia, the prospect of a move to Singapore was an exciting one. Says Olivia, “For me, Singapore was a bit of an abstract ‘idea’, but I’d heard Mum’s stories and knew how special a place it was to her.” Returning to Singapore proved almost painfully nostalgic for Tanya. “I found it quite overwhelming, actually,” she recalls. “At one point, Tia was invited for a playdate and when I dropped her at the house, I realised it was the same one that had once belonged to my own best friend.”
