A father's gift of time
Mr Cheah Kok Keong kept The Straits Times issue of the day his child, Cheryl, was born, gifting it to her on her 21st birthday on June 7. Alongside it was the June 8 copy.
The passage of time, and the ways in which it is marked, has long fascinated Mr Cheah Kok Keong.
So when each of his three children was born, he quietly began a family tradition: he saved copies of the day's edition of The Straits Times to gift them when they came of age.
On June 7, 2025, when his youngest child, Cheryl, turned 21, he presented her with a yellowing but well-preserved copy of the June 7, 2004, edition, carefully sealed in a vacuum bag. Alongside it was the June 8, 2004, edition.
'June 7 was the day Cheryl was born and June 8, the day after, covered what happened on June 7,' says Mr Cheah on why he saved two days' worth of newspapers .
The present wasn't exactly a surprise to Cheryl as she had seen her older siblings, Stanley and Clara, receive their birthday newspapers when they turned 21. But the gesture still moved her.
'I'm very happy that my father saved those issues,' she says , adding that she will be keeping them in the airtight bags they came in .
Reading a physical paper feels 'more engaging and connected' compared with perusing an online story, she says.
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'You have to hold the paper as you read it,' she notes. 'Digital news can be distracting with pop-ups, and information can be edited or deleted, losing the sense of permanence and credibility.'
She points out how her father's idea mirrors a trend that's gaining popularity on TikTok, where young Japanese visit convenience stores such as 7-Eleven and Family Mart to print newspapers from the day they were born.
'They're paying to find out what was happening when they were born, and he thought about it years ago,' she says with a smile.
Mr Cheah, 59, a senior manager at the National University of Singapore's Advanced Robotics Centre, views newspapers as 'time capsules'. They connect people to the historical events that coincided with their birth dates and make for unique gifts, he says.
'I like history, especially recent historical moments linked to our experiences. I like to make sure that my children know what happened on the day they were born,' he adds.
His passion for commemorating milestones extends beyond his family.
In 2014, he contacted KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH) to propose an event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a Guinness World Record that the hospital had broken in 1966. That year, KKH recorded the world's highest number of deliveries in a single year, with 39,835 babies born. Mr Cheah was among them.
His idea: to gather as many people as possible born at KKH.
On Oct 16, 2016, that vision came to life when 2,241 people born at KKH – aged seven to 84 – gathered at Bishan Stadium. They broke the Guinness record for the largest reunion of individuals born at the same hospital, surpassing the previous record of 1,221 people set by The Medical City, a network of hospitals and clinics, in the Philippines in 2015.
Then in 2017, while organising an appreciation ceremony for national servicemen as part of the NS50 celebration, Mr Cheah discovered that Taman Jurong – where he has lived since 1995 – was where Singapore's first batch of national servicemen had enlisted 50 years earlier.
Mr Cheah, who is a grassroots leader in the area, says he brought this to the attention of then Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the MP for Jurong GRC who was overseeing the Taman Jurong ward. Mr Tharman is now Singapore's president.
The result? On Aug 6, 2017, some 500 Taman Jurong residents, students, Singapore Armed Forces personnel and pioneer national servicemen gathered at Taman Jurong Greens neighbourhood park to witness the unveiling of a heritage marker.
'It was here, on Aug 17, 1967, that Singapore's pioneer batch of 900 NSmen in the 3rd and 4th Singapore Infantry Regiments were conscripted into the army,' said a Straits Times report of the event.
In 2025, upon learning that The Straits Times would be marking its 180th anniversary, Mr Cheah contacted the paper to share how it has become part of his family's legacy.
The June 7 and 8, 2004, editions of The Straits Times that Mr Cheah Kok Keong saved. He says newspapers connect people to the historical events that coincided with their birth dates and make for unique gifts.
ST PHOTO: BRIAN TEO
Cheryl, a student at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, says she occasionally reads the online version of The Straits Times , and likes that the information is reliable .
'It's more official and it won't give fake news or play jokes,' she says. 'Many online news companies do not reach out to the original source to ask for permission to post, or go out of their way to verify information before posting online .'
Mr Cheah, meanwhile, is looking forward to another milestone.
Carefully stored in vacuum bags are copies of the Nov 27 and 28 , 2023, issues of the paper. They mark the birthday of his grandson Theodore, and will be presented to him when he turns 21 on Nov 27, 2044.
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