People: A daughter remembers

2009/10/21

ZAHARAH OTHMAN

The Batu Gajah-born daughter of a Danish architect who built many of the country’s landmark buildings is back to honour him, writes ZAHARAH OTHMAN.

SOMEONE told Ruth Iversen Rollit that a child born out in the East will always be lured back. But Londoner Rollit’s regular return visits to the place she calls her second home has more reasons to it than just the mysterious charm of this side of the world.

It was in Batu Gajah, Perak, that she and her brother were born. Her son was also born there 46 years ago.

Her parents made Malaya their home, following the footsteps of her uncle, a planter. Sadly, her young husband was tragically killed here in an armed robbery that left Rollit widowed at 24.

Her father, Danish architect B.M. Iversen, built many buildings that became famous landmarks around the country he called home for 40 years.

Many of the buildings that Berthold Iversen of Iversen, van Sitteren & Partners built were destroyed during the Second World War. But a few remain.

Ruth Rollit is back with a mission.

I met Rollit some years ago at a talk in London given by Datuk Mohamad Nor Khalid (famously known as Lat), our celebrated cartoonist. Rollit had brought with her old copies of Lat comics and in one were drawings of buildings in Ipoh-the Jubilee Hall and some Shaw Brothers’ cinemas. She was clearly happy that the famous cartoonist had caricatured her father’s buildings and had flown in to see him.

“It means so much to me. I met Lat many years ago in Kuala Lumpur. I have all his books. He has the same love for Ipoh as I have. And when he described my father’s buildings as great, I thought it all seemed too good to be true,” said Rollit.

The Jubilee Hall, Rollit remembers, was a dance hall; her father had built it for the Shaw Brothers.

“I had never been inside. It was not quite the place for nice young girls,” she said. It was apparently the haunt of English soldiers who went there to let their hair down during the konfrontasi.

She remembers a tower outside where the Shaw Brothers would advertise their films.

Rollit is back in Ipoh with a mission. She wants to make sure her father’s works live on and will deliver a talk on his works at an event organised by the Perak Heritage Society at the Royal Ipoh Club tomorrow.

It will be a walk down memory lane for Rollit for it was at the Ipoh Club that she used to have supper with the family and dance to the band’s music.

“My father was a very talented man. He was the one who brought international designs to Malaya. He built at least 40 cinemas for Shaw Brothers and Cathay. He also built radio stations, hospitals, churches and houses”.

Another Iversen building is the Geosains Complex. According to Ken Yeang’s book, Architecture of Malaysia, “it became an indication of status among Ipoh’s wealthy businessmen to own an Iversen-designed house.”

A dedicated man who lived for his work, even while in hospital in Denmark recuperating from an operation, Iversen always completed his work. He won the first prize for Federal House in Kuala Lumpur.

Rollit’s architect father, Iversen (left) at the official opening of Federal House in 1954.

Rollit, now 70, said her life in Batu Gajah was rudely interrupted by the war. And after 4½ years in Australia, the family returned to Malaya.

She remembers their house in Jalan Tambun in Batu Gajah, an Iversen house.

“I remember the sitting room where we had a large desk where my father would sit on one side and my mother on the other. And every evening, after work, he would sit and draw while listening to classical music and opera on the gramophone. He loved his work. It was his greatest joy,” said Rollit, adding with a tinge of sadness that she did not follow his footsteps. Her brother, however, became an architect and for a while worked in Malaysia.

Each visit back to Malaysia also brings sad memories.

“I had always wanted to be a planter’s wife. I met Donald in Malaya and married in 1962. He was murdered in 1963,” she said, remembering the tragic day in April that changed her life completely.

Donald Baxter, then a young estate manager, had gone with a Malay watchman to pay salaries to his workers while she was at home preparing dinner. They were expecting some guests. Their car, a wedding gift from his boss, was ambushed. The two men were shot and the car was burnt, but not before they were robbed of the RM13,731 meant for the workers.

Rollit, who remarried 6½xx years after the incident, was left with a five-week-old baby.

“You never quite recover. There were days when I couldn’t talk about it and just wanted to cry. Our son kept me going.”

So, as with all her visits back to Batu Gajah and Ipoh, Rollit will visit the cemetery where the young planter is buried.

The award-winning Federal House, Kuala Lumpur, designed by Iversen.