The CNY Celebration at DISTED is extra special this year, as we welcome the son and grandchildren of the late Mr. Ian Kingsley Meek, who once resided in our historic campus. Honoring our heritage, our conference room bears his name, “I.K. Meek Conference room” and our scholarship program continues to honour Mr Ian.Kingsley Meek through the “I.K. Meek Scholarship” awarded to our top-performing students.
Ian was born in 1924. He studied law at New College, Oxford, but his degree was interrupted by the Second World War. He joined the Navy and became a navigator on motor gunboats, operating in the North Sea off the East Coast of England.
After the War, he finished his law degree and was called to the English Bar. In 1950, he was offered a position at the Penang law firm of Presgrave & Matthews, initially for a two-year term but ultimately a term which lasted for 42 years.
He practised to begin with as a barrister, Malaya (as it then was, not recognising the English distinctions between the Bar and the solicitor professions). Very early on in his career, he was instructed by the Royal Air Force, based in Butterworth, to represent Elizabeth Parsons, the wife of a pilot who was killed in an aircraft crash. Immediately after the crash, suffering from acute depression caused by the death of her husband, Mrs Parsons tragically killed her two young children. She was charged with murder, a charge against which Ian Meek defended her and was acquitted. The case was widely reported internationally and helped entrench Ian Meek’s reputation as a respected and successful barrister.
340 Macalister Road (the house’s formal name was Valhalla – the home of Viking heroes killed in battle, but a name rarely used) – was much loved by Ian Meek and his family. He was delighted to know that it was to become DISTED College and would have felt very honoured to know that a scholarship had been named after him. He was a modest man and was both an academic and a man of unimpeachable morals. Naming a scholarship after him is a beautiful tribute to him.
source: Charles Meek (Son of I.K.Meek),3 March 2024
