KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 3 — Farewell to the real McCoy. The doctor who never stopped worrying about the bomb and kept detesting it.
Ronald McCoy’s extraordinary journey ended on September 1, 2026. He did many things, among them founded with global colleagues an organisation which won the Nobel Peace Prize a decade ago.
He was 96-years-old, epitomised service and love for humanity. As a former schoolboy cricketer, he’d be quite delighted to declare it an inning.
The life of this doctor who delivered so many of my countrymen is a Malaysian story. Both the journey and his thinking.
My own experiences with Dr McCoy were limited but three stand out. Coffee and chat while preparing his citation in 2004, the actual night to honour him and the brief encounter at a city motel reception area.
I did not realise the coffee was over 20 years ago.
The Victoria Institution Old Boys’ Association committee asked me to meet the man selected as Victorian of the Year in 2004, to prep his citation.
I had seen Dr McCoy at alumni events but sitting down and talking to the man about his life was an honour.
He was like the first recipient, Siew Nim Chee in 2002, who kept links to the school and its alumni even after their schooling days were over. (Siew, the first Malaysian Cornell University graduate contributed a portion of his salary to the school throughout his working years)
Calmly, he retraced his years in Pasar Road and how the war interrupted his adolescence.
From student he turned into a 13-year-old who worked for the Federated Engineering Company. The factory is now where Fraser’s Business Park is situated, just behind the Chan Sow Lin LRT station.
He worked side by side with his father during the war, and since the plant made noodles, his mom would give them curry in a flask, so that they could have curry mee.
The war ended, but his regret about the atomic bombs used to accelerate Japan’s surrender was a preoccupation which never gave way.
In secondary school he stayed true to the school ethos, to show character on the field, in the classroom and stay a gentleman. He was school captain at the VI.
His headmaster Frederick Daniel read out on August 5, 1949, this about McCoy. “In the history of the VI, no other boy had ever been school Captain and Rodger Scholar in the same year or had combined successfully academic study and other school activities.”
Ronald McCoy was 74, when old boys from all years, gathered in Hilton Petaling Jaya to honour him in 2004.
McCoy addressed the boys as he would have more than half a century ago as head boy.
It was a forthright manner of speaking he possessed, filled with purpose always. It was what he was championing rather than about himself. His self-effacing exterior always makes people ask, who is that man?
Neither politician nor billionaire. But a man born to serve.
In Universiti Malaya he studied medicine on a university scholarship and government bursary. He repaid that debt and some more.
In the obstetrics and gynaecology department at KL Hospital, Assunta and Pantai Medical Centre for 40 years. He retired in 1996 after making 20,000 deliveries.
This is plenty but his natural tendency to want to do more benefitted Malaysia and the world further. A past president of the Malaysian Medical Association, he desired universal coverage and equitable access for all through various committees for decades.
He served on various non-medical NGOs to champion transparency, free speech and art.
Which moves us to his participation in the quest to free mankind from the horrors of nuclear annihilation.
He founded the local chapter of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in 1987; the organisation won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 and he went on to become its co-president.
Now, all of these were part of the tribute to be read at the dinner in 2004. The post and telegraph department draughtsman’s son was 74 then.
These events are supposed to be tail ends turned into tall tales in retiree gardens.
He wrote new chapters thereafter. There’s ageing well, and ageing gracefully, and the McCoy option of doing it magnificently.
Our lad founded The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in 2007. He tirelessly contributed to it and with 470 organisations signed up to it, and in 2017 it was given the Nobel Peace Prize.
There is trouble when the CV is too prodigious or celebrated. The man gets lost in the text.
On July 11, 2011, I found myself, with tens of people somewhat trapped inside one of the many cheap hotels on Jalan Pudu facing the bus terminal. There were no check-ins, everyone was fleeing police firing tear gas at protesters.
It was Bersih II and people were running helter-skelter. Dr McCoy was standing amidst the people with a handkerchief covering his mouth.
He was not too internationalised to forget that he was with his people.
The fights to get things right are small and big, and no one is too big for a fight, is what I think when I think about Ronald McCoy.
He always attended alumni dinners, I remember the last one I attended. There is a tradition to mark the generations attending the event.
The emcee begins with calling out all the students of the VI from the 1940s. Only Dr McCoy stood up, to heartfelt ovations from those present.
In every sense, he’s never stopped being school captain, only that the campus grew larger, and larger, without him forgetting that we are all individuals equally loved.
He was not only delivering babies nor stopped doing so in 1996. Malaysians, whether we know it or not, stand on the shoulders of giants.
This Malaysian focussed on doing rather than fretting about identity. And for that, all of us are wiser.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
