Sekolah Umum Gombak Lane and Dr Tom Dooley....

SEKOLAH UMUM GOMBAK LANE

Having written about pakdokter's childhood days in the last blog entitled '1958-1963...', pakdokter decided to google on a few topics that pakdokter had written in that blog. The internet is indeed an amazing tool. Voila.....there was the homepage of Sekolah Kebangsaan Sultan Hisamuddin Alam Shah Kuala Lumpur, the new school that replaced the Sekolah Umum Gombak Lane where pakdokter schooled for 4 years.

This school was established in 1888 from a donation by a Malay millionaire of those days by the name of Nakhoda Yusof. The original school was located on Malay Street on the lot where the Wisma Yakin is currently situated. It was then named Sekolah Kampung Melayu.

In 1896, the school was shifted to Jalan Store (Jalan Raja) and was renamed Sekolah Umum Gombak Lane. In 1963 a new school was built on Jalan Swettenham ( opposite the Bank Negara Malaysia building) and was renamed Sekolah Hisamuddin Alam Shah.

The school started with 60 pupils in 1888, had 150 pupils by 1906 and about 600 pupils by the time pakdokter went there in 1958 to 1961. Originally the pupils were all boys, and when girls were first admitted to the school, the girls had their hair cut short and made to dress up in boys clothes as their parents were not comfortable to have their daughters sit side by side with the boys!

Many of the pupils were children of police officers from Jalan Bluff and Jalan Birch. Others were children from Kampung Melaka ( Melaka Street), Kampung Semarang ( where the brand new Menara CIMB and SOGO Dept Store are now located) and Kampung Jawa ( Jalan Tun Perak).

Come to think of it, pakdokter can now remember some of pakdokter's classmates whose fathers were policemen. And pakdokter had visited their homes at the police quarters along Birch Road fronting the Merdeka Stadium. The multi-storeyed police quarters are still there, if pakdokter is right, but they are no longer occupied by anyone.

Below is a picture of the Sekolah Umum Gombak Lane drawn out from the school's web-site.

DR TOM DOOLEY 1927-1961

Pakdokter had written that one of pakdokter's elder brothers was helped by one Dr Tom Dooley to go to the UCLA to pursue a course in Medical Engineering to enable him to become a qualfied 'renal hemodialysis technician. Pakdokter google-searched Dr Tom Dooley and made quite a lot of surprising findings!

But before that, pakdokter has to make some clarifications, after having spoken to pakdokter's brother about this matter. Pakdokter's brother was a dresser/medical assistant serving the folks in the district of Kuala Lipis. His work, apart from hospital duties included rounds to the villages and the orang asli settlements. It was in Kuala Lipis that pakdokter's brother came into contact with a group of Peace Corp medicos and nurses who were based across the river which happens to be in Gua Musang.

They became friends with pakdokter's brother, helped by the fact that pakdokter's brother was conversant in the English language. These Peace Corp workers would regularly cross the Pahang River by boat to Kuala Lipis and have parties at the Kuala Lipis Hospital. They would regularly sing the famous 'Tom Dooley' song and claimed that that song represented the group that they worked for and that their chief was one Dr Tom Dooley. It was these medicos who introduced the information and idea about 'hemodialysis' to pakdokter's brother, 'hemodialysis' being a very new technology then.

It so happened that a few months later pakdokter's brother received a letter from the Ministry of Health inviting applicants for a course in 'hemodialysis'. As pakdokter's brother had already had some idea and knowledge about this technology from these Peace Corp workers, he applied for the training and was awarded a Fullbright Scholarship to do the course at the UCLA. The Ministry of Health gave pakdokter's brother a no-pay study leave.......How generous!

Whether the Peace Corp workers had any influence in the Fulbright Award was anybody's guess.....

But here is another interesting anecdote. At one of the regular parties, one of the medicos was somewhat drunk and had told pakdokter's brother in 'confidence' that they were actually carrying out regular air-borne operations from Kuala Lipis/Gua Musang area into Cambodia and Laos providing medical and surgical services to the US soldiers injured in the Vietnam War! And they had in fact offerred pakdokter's brother to join them in one of these operations which he did not take up.

The life of Dr Thomas Anthony Dooley made an equally interesting reading. Dr Tom Dooley , graduated from the St Louis University School of Medicine in 1953 and served as Navy Medical Officer on U.S.S. Montague involved in the evacuation of 600,000 refugees from North Vietnam to the South during the Vietnam War. Shocked by the sufferring of the people and saddened by the inadequacies of health-care services in the Indo-Chinese region, he returned to Laos and Cambodia after his service with the Navy came to an end ( although a book alleged that he was dismissed because of homosexuality) , and helped establish small clinics and hospitals in Laos for the benefit of the local folks.

He died very young at the age of 34 in New York, from Malignant Melanoma, a very aggressive cancer of the skin. For his social work Dr Tom Dooley was regarded a hero and higly honoured by his friends and colleagues.

But there are also detractors of Dr Tom Dooley. In one book he was alleged to be a CIA plant scouting the area for the military. There are apparently 500 documents detailing his communication with the Chief of the CIA in Vietnam. Some even blamed Tom Dooley for initiating America's involvement in South East Asia and ultimately in the tragic Vietnam War!

So were the Peace Corp medicos and nurses CIA operatives based in Kuala Lipis and Gua Musang during the Vietnam War days........?

There were also slanderous rumours that he was a homosexual. They based this on his sympathy for those who were gays, and the fact that he was never married and was always successful at recruting young men at to become doctors.

He was also a poet and this one was written by him....

Listen to the agony of mankind

I who am fed, who never yet went hungry for a day,

I see the dead, the children starved for lack of bread.

I see and try to pray.

Listen to the agony of mankind

I who am warm, who never have yet lacked a sheltering home,

In dull alarm, the dispossessed of hut and farm

Aimless and transient roam.

Listen to the agony of mankind

I who am strong, with health and love and laughter in my soul,

I see a throng of stunted children reared in the wrong

And wish to make them whole.

Listen to the agony of mankind

And know full well that not until I share their bitter cry,

Their pain and hell, can God within my spirit dwell

And bring America's blessings nigh.

Dr Tom Dooley