"I love you Dad. Too many regrets": Sharon Au to Jeffery Au 欧大使, 74 (d. 25 December 2023)
Jeffery Au 欧大使, 74 (d. 25 December 2023)
During her O levels, Sharon Au had studied, often past midnight, at a community centre near her school (St Nicholas’ Girls School).
She was then living together with her aunt, who was of the impression that she had gone astray and complained to her mother, who subsequently informed her father, with the hope that he would bring her to heel.
Jeffery, who was then a police officer and estranged from his daughter, had the knack of locating her - the “CID way”, according to Sharon. This was the context to one of her most unforgettable reminiscences of his late father.
Lianhe Zaobao, 5 January 2024
Shin Min Daily News, 5 January 2024
“One particular night, he broke into a study room of the community centre where she was, akin to that in a police drama serial, to the stares of ten pair of eyes. It was then that he realised that her daughter was merely revising her schoolwork”, recounted Sharon.
She added that this was the first time that his father was “scared out of his wits” by a small group of students. To this day, this sharp contrast with how he had often handled gangsters and criminals never fail to amuse Sharon. He later explained his actions to Sharon, in an unabashed manner, possibly to hide his embarrassment and took the opportunity to exhort to her daughter the importance of studying hard.
The times when she had coffee with her father were memories that she did not forget. To Sharon, his father “was so handsome and bemusing”.
“I was not able to make it time [back to Singapore] to tell him that I was always so proud of him and had always loved him.”, Sharon remarked regretfully in an interview with Lianhe Zaobao on Jan 4.
Sharon Au's last WhatsApp message to her father, 26 December 2023
Photo Credit: Sharon Au/IG
Sharon was in Paris when she received news that her father had passed away in Singapore on Christmas Day and cried her way back to Singapore.
Jeffery Au had served as a police officer at the Criminal Investigation Directorate’s Secret Service Bureau. In this role, where he made his name, he and his colleagues cracked down hard on secret societies in the 1970s and 1980s. After he assumed the role of discipline master at St Andrew’s Secondary School, he went around schools, with his anti-gang talks, to share his experience and encourage teenage students to stay far away from crime.
These talks, which were remembered fondly, were recounted to Sharon in an outpouring of messages, via her social media, after she made public news of her father’s passing earlier this week (3 Jan).
Many remembered Jeffery’s influence, without which they may have gone astray. They also recounted that Au had a strong sense of purpose, especially in putting across his advice, sometimes to the extent of exhausting the two microphones assigned to him.
He was, to many students who had heard him then, not only an inspiring, serious but amusing speaker, but he was also the “Greatest Of All Time” (GOAT).
He was simply “The Legend”.
At the age of 10, Sharon gave his father the moniker “Prince Charming” (白马王子), as he had liked to dress himself, from head to toe, in white.
Sharon was a proud daughter to an amazing father.
“Don’t you think I look like my Dad? His eyes, nose and his ears. I even inherited his sense of humour”, Sharon related in jest.
Photo Credit: Sharon Au/IG, 3 January 2024
Top image: Sharon Au/IG, 3 January 2024
