- Updated:2024-10-11 03:20 Views:80
SINGAPORE: Dr Lee Wei Ling, who died on Wednesday (Oct 9), was a prominent neurologist who was unafraid to voice her opinions on various issues.
Her columns, which for a time appeared regularly in The Sunday Times, contained many of her candid reflections – on her patients, family and Singapore society at large. She also posted frequently on social media.
Dr Lee was born on Jan 7, 1955 - the second child of Singapore’s founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and lawyer Kwa Geok Choo.
Despite her family’s prominence, Dr Lee often described her upbringing as “frugal”.
“I was born into a middle class family with sensible parents that did not want their children brought up as rich and privileged,” she wrote in a 2020 Facebook post.
“My father was Prime Minister of Singapore and we could have stayed in a huge bungalow in the Istana grounds. But he did not want us growing up with the wrong idea of our importance and entitlement. He did not like the idea that if we threw a ball, a butler would run to get it. So we lived in our old pre-war home at Oxley Road.”
38 Oxley Road was the family home of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who died in 2015. Dr Lee continued living there after her brothers, Mr Lee Hsien Loong and Mr Lee Hsien Yang, moved out.
In 2020, Dr Lee revealed that she had progressive supranuclear palsy. She described the brain disease as a "Parkinson’s-like illness that slows physical movements, impairs fast eye movements and balance", eventually resulting in death.
Her death at the age of 69 was announced by her brother, Mr Lee Hsien Yang, in a Facebook post shortly before 6am on Wednesday.
Related:
Lee Wei Ling, daughter of Lee Kuan Yew, dies aged 69 EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATIONDr Lee attended Nanyang Primary School, Nanyang Girls High and Raffles Institution.
She became a President’s Scholar in 1973 and read medicine at the then-University of Singapore (now known as the National University of Singapore), graduating at the top of her class.
Apart from her academic successprimo gaming, Dr Lee had a keen interest in physical fitness and exercise, particularly long-distance running and swimming. She also attained a black belt in karate in 1970, at the age of 15, making her one of the youngest in Singapore to do so.
Dr Lee Wei Ling as a child in an undated photograph. (Photo: Facebook/Lee Wei Ling)