First blind president of Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped Tan Guan Heng dies at age 86

SINGAPORE: Writer and former president of the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped (SAVH) Tan Guan Heng died on Tuesday (Jan 10). 

Current SAVH president Derek Ong confirmed this in a statement on the association’s website on Wednesday. 

Mr Tan, who became blind in both eyes in university, died at the age of 86. 

He was the first blind person to serve as the president of the association from 1975 to 1980. His second stint as president was from 2005 to 2012. 

He was the first visually impaired person to obtain a degree from the then-University of Malaya in Singapore, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (Economics) in 1961. 

After graduating, he could not find a job so he established his own publishing house GH Book Forum in 1965. 

As a writer, he contributed to columns for the Sunday Monitor and went on to write several non-fiction books and novels, including My Love is Blind in 1995 and Night Butterfly in 2001. 

The former was adapted into a musical in 2017. Another book by him, The People’s Verdict, was transcribed into braille. 

He championed people with special needs through his 50 years of community work. In recognition of his efforts, he received the President’s Social Service Award in 2010 and the Public Service Star in 2015.

He was also a recipient of the inaugural Goh Chok Tong Enable Awards in 2019. 

On Thursday, Singapore's ambassador-at-large Tommy Koh wrote a tribute to his former Raffles Institution classmate on Facebook, recounting the incident that caused Mr Tan to become blind. 

According to Professor Koh, Mr Tan had an accident while playing hockey after completing his final exams. A hockey ball hit him in the eye, causing him to become blind in both eyes. 

“Faced with this adversity, Guan Heng decided to learn to read braille and to find a way to make a living. He opened a book store which he ran for many years,” he wrote on Facebook. 

“When the business became uncompetitive he had to close the store and became a full-time writer. He published several books of fiction and non-fiction.” 

As president of SAVH, Mr Tan persuaded Professor Koh to become a patron of the association, he shared. 

“I am very proud of Guan Heng for his courage in the face of adversity and for having provided leadership to the visually disabled community. I shall miss our frequent chats on the phone.”