A SPUNKY woman ahead of her time - this is how Madam Wong Ah Mooi will be remembered. Back in 1958, when she was a petite, pretty 22-year old, she became Singapore?s first woman cab driver.
It was when few women drove, let alone earn a living by driving strangers around. After a life time of living just outside conventions, the 'Iron Lady' - as she was known to her friends - died last week from heart failure.
The mother of three and grandmother of six was 72. As a cabby, she took everything that came with the job - even lifting her Morris Minor single-handedly out of a ditch into which she had accidentally reversed it.
Her brother-in-law, insurance agent Roger Cheong, 60, saw her do it. He said: 'She is very strong. She alone carried the whole car out. I was so surprised'.
And had any of her passengers tried getting fresh with her, they would have felt pain at the hands of a holder of a black belt in judo. Luckily, none did.
Back in her hometown of Ipoh, Malaysia, she took a bullet in her shoulder during the Japanese occupation. During what her family recalls were the race riots here, she was slashed in her back once by an attacker.
Drawing on her own life experiences, she drummed it into her children: 'If I can survive all that, there is nothing else you cannot do.'
Her youngest daughter Mabel Cheong, a tutor in her 30s, said: 'She's a fighter and will never admit defeat, even when her health was deteriorating'.
With almost no education, Madam Wong left her rubber-tapping job and came here in her late teens to eke out a better living.
She was a petrol pump assistant, a nanny and a door-to-door saleswoman for condensed milk. She loved cars and earned her driving license while in her early 20s.
She bought that Morris Minor and began conducting driving lessons. She went on to drive a pirate taxi, plying from Alexander to Geylang, and from Newton to Pasir Panjang on the very first day.
Her marriage in 1962 did not deter her from her cab driving, neither did a stroke in the early 1990s that partially paralyzed her. After a year of acupunture and physiotheraphy, she had jumped right back into her taxi. She retired in 2000.
