Category: Pioneer

U Wun (Minthuwun), U Khin Zaw (“K”) and U Thein Han (Zawgyi)

U Khin Zaw

• Chief Librarian of Rangoon University
• He founded BBS (Burma Broadcasting Service, Myanmar Ah Than) and served as its Director.
• Wrote “Burma in My Life-time”.
• Compiled notes for Burmese Classical songs.
• Collaborated with Minthuwun for “Burmese Nursery Rhymes”.

U Thein Han

• He studied Burmese and Library Science.
  For many years, he served as Chief Librarian of Rangoon University Library and Rangoon University Central Library (RUCL).
• National Literary Award winner
• Sar Pay Beik Mun Award winner

U Wun

• U Wun headed the Translation Department at Rangoon University.
• He served as Professor of Burmese at RU, and as Visiting Professor at Osaka University.
• He is a Lexicographer.
  He compiled the Myanmar Abhidan.
  He worked with Professor Harada (Chit Man Nwe) and team on the Japanese-Burmese Dictionary.

Khit San Sar Pay

• Zawgyi and Minthuwun are Laureate Poets. They co-founded Khit San Sar Pay with Theikpan Maung Wa (ICS U Sein Tin).
  The three were the early students of Saya U Pe Maung Tin (Pali and Burmese Scholar, first native Principal of Rangoon College).

Libraries

• In the early days, some Faculties of RU had libraries.
• Under the then new Education System, most Universities and Institutes had their libraries.
• The main library was known as RUCL (RU Central Library).
• Saya Zawgyi has a bust honoring him as the Librarian of RU Library and RUCL.
• Daw Myint Myint Khin and U Thaw Kaung were Assistant Librarians for the Faculty of Social Science.
• Daw Myint Myint became RIT Librarian.
• U Thaw Kaung became RUCL Librarian.

Broadcasting

• U Khin Zaw was assisted by his cousin U Pe Thaw and his wife.
• U Than Myint was his mentee.

• U Kyaw Nyein, U Hla Bu & Daw Olive, Alison Tun Ngwe, Daw Than Hnit and others produced high quality programs.
• Several BBS members were offered assignments and permanent positions at BBC and VOA.

“K”

• “K” wrote a semi-autobiography in “Burma In My Time”. The title had to be changed “Myanmar In My Time” for the reprint. Ko Wint Khin Zaw mailed me a copy of his father’s book.
• He transcribed Burmese Classical songs.

• “K” provided the music and some translations for “Maung Khway Boh” nursery songs. The work is based on kabyars by Minthuwun.

• He hosted visiting musicians.

Minthuwun’s works

• Dalaban (U Htin Kyaw) wrote several articles about his father Minthuwun (e.g Burmese terms for RU, Departments and Disciplines).

• Minthuwun compiled the Burmese Dictionary.
• He collaborated with Chit Mann Nwe & team at Osaka University on the Japanese-Burmese Dictionary.
• Minthuwun compiled a list of Outstanding Burmans (in their fields).
• Aspiring poets studied “Su Tu Pyu” and other books by Minthuwun.
• He collaborated with U Khin Zaw on Burmese Nursery Songs.

Zawgyi’s Kabyars

• Zawgyi’s kabyars are recited around the world not only by renowned speakers but also children (e.g contest for reciting kabyars).
• There is a PBS documentary about Saya’s famous kabyar (Bedar Lann) with the translation by Dr. Lyn Swe Aye.

Saya U Kyaw Tun (EE, GBNF) is a Saya of our Sayas including Saya U Sein Hlaing (GBNF) and Saya U Tin Swe (GBNF).

Saya H Num Kok (C, GBNF) and Saya U Ba Toke (GBNF) are Sayas of our Sayas including Saya Dr. Aung Gyi and Saya U Min Wun (GBNF).

• RUESU published 6 Annual Magazines.
• Mr. Robert Hole (GBNF) was English Editor for one of the magazines.
• U Aw Taik Moh (C54) was Business Manager for one of the magazines.
• U Maung Maung (M54, elder brother of U Aye M62) was a member of the Magazine Committee.

• Prome Hall (which was residence for many Engineering Students) won the Inter-Hall Soccer Tournament for two consecutive years.
• U Chan Tha was Captain.
• Members include Saya U Tin Swe, U Win Kyu, U Taik Ain.

• U Chan Tha (GBNF) is Past Captain and Gold of RUBC.
• He is seen in a Trophy Presentation with Daw Mya Yee (Spouse of Prime Minister U Nu).

• RUBC had Challenge Cups for Inter-Club Events :
  President’s Cup for Coxed Eights and
  Prime Minister’s Cup for Coxed Fours.

• U Tun Kyi played Soccer for RU, Railways and Burma.

• U Tin Hlaing (Railways, father of San Yu Hlaing / UCC) was an early EE graduate.

• U Kyaw Sein was admitted to RU Engineering Classes after passing I.Sc in 1924.
• He graduated in 1928 (as a member of the Second Batch).
• Children : Peter, Victor, Ruby …

• Some B.Sc graduates were also admitted to the special / condensed Engineering Courses.
• They graduated a few months earlier (as the First Batch) than those taking the 4-year regular courses.

• Most Engineering projects were overseen by Boards, Corporations & Commissions.

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Founding Members

• Saya Allen Htay (C58, GBNF)
• Saya Dr. K C Chiu (U Tin Aung, ChE63)
• Saya Dr. Nyo Win (K H Chen, M65)
• Saya U Maung Maung (George Chan, ChE66)
• Saya U Myat Htoo (C68)
• U Hla Min (EC69)
• Benny Tan (Yu Beng, M70)
• Saya U Thein Aung (James Wu, Met72)
• Maurice Chee (U Hla Myint Thein, M75)
• U Khin Maung Zaw (KMZ,EC76)
• Gordon Kaung (U Kaung Kaung Oo, M83)

Notes

• Almost all members are from SF Bay Area, California.
  KMZ (webmaster) is from Seattle, Washington.
• Most early meetings were hosted by Ko Benny Tan
• An Objective was to host the First RIT Grand Reunion and Saya Pu Zaw Pwe
  (also fondly known as SPZP-2000
• Saya Allen wrote “Can you spare US $500 (and more)?”
• Five Golden Sponsors and many donors — large and small — ensured that “U Nyo Win’s Act” would not take effect.

Photos

• KMZ took the photo at a meeting hosted by Ko Benny
• KMZ showed us around Seattle (and day trips to Portland and Vancouver).
  The Space Needle is an exhibit from an Expo
• SPZP-2000 Organizers
  Some are from Southern California

*** မောင်စွမ်းရည်

ငယ်မည် — ဝင်းဖေ

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** စာပေ

အမျိုးသားစာပေ ဆုရှင် National Literature Award Winner

Poet ကဗျာ

e.g ရှစ်လေးလုံး ကဗျာ (ဓာတ်ပုံ)

Author စာအုပ် ပြုစု ထုတ်ဝေ

e.g ဘာလဲဟဲ့ စာအုပ် (ဓာတ်ပုံ)

Columnist ပင်တိုင် ဆောင်းပါးရှင်

Literary Critic စာပေ ဝေဖန်သုံးသပ် သူ

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** ပညာရေး

Bachelor degree from Mandalay University မန္တလေးတက္ကသိုလ်

Diploma in Education ပညာရေး ဒီပလိုမာ

Diploma in Library Science စာကြည့်တိုက် ဒီပလိုမာ

ကျောင်းဆရာ

မြန်မာစာသင်ရိုး လက်ထောက် Secretary, Curriculum Committee

စာကြည့်တိုက်မှူး

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** ဆက်နွယ်

တင်မိုး

ဒါရိုက်တာဝင်းဖေ

မိုးမခ

*** ဒါရိုက်တာ ဝင်းဖေ

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** အနုပညာရှင် မိသားစု

ရွှေပြည် ဦးဘတင် — စွယ်စုံရ (Father)

ဦးဝင်းဖေ — စွယ်စုံရ

မီမီဝင်းဖေ (သမီး)

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** လုပ်ငန်း အတွေ့အကြုံ တချို့

* လူထုသတင်းစာ — အယ်ဒီတာ

* မန္တလေး ပန်တျာ — ကျောင်းအုပ်

* ကာတွန်း

* ပန်းချီ

1960s— Modern Art ပြပွဲ (ပေါ်ဦးသက်၊ ခင်မောင်ရင်၊ ဝင်းဖေ …)

နောက်ပိုင်း — Freelance

* ရုပ်ရှင်

အကယ်ဒမီ ဆုရှင်

Script writer, Director & Producer

* စာပေ

Short stories, စာအုပ် ၊

ဟောပြောပွဲ (တင်မိုး၊ မောင်စွမ်းရည်၊ ဝင်းဖေ …)

* အသံလွှင့်

(ဝင်းဖေ ရဲ့) လွယ်အိပ်

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** ဆက်နွယ်

Architects Incorporated — ဦးဘိုကြီး၊ ဦးတင်ထွန်း၊ ဦးအောင်ကြီးမြင့်

တင်မိုး

မောင်စွမ်းရည်

Feedback

Myint Pe wrote :

ကာတွန်းကို ဘယ်လိုထိမိအောင်ရေးသလဲဆိုတာ ဆရာဝင်းဖေ ရဲ့ကာတွန်းတွေဆီကသင်ယူခဲ့ရပါတယ်၊

ကျနော်လေးစားသောကာတွန်းမြင်ဆရာဖြစ်ပါတယ်။

Brief Bio

• He had excellent communication skills (reading, writing, speaking).
• He won essay and translation contests.

• His mother requested him to study only for two years at the University of Rangoon and then return home and work.
• He became a Saya at the Pantanaw National School.
  For accreditation requirements of the school, he requested help from U Nu (who was a Principal)
• Later, U Nu (leader of AFPFL and Prime Minister) asked U Thant to help the party and the government in various capacities.
  
• U Thant succeeded Mr. James Barrington (ICS, RUBC Gold) as the Permanent Secretary of the Burmese Delegation to the United Nations.
  The post would later be called “Myanmar Ambassador to the United Nations”.

UNSG (United Nations Secretary General)

• Daj Hammerjold, the second United Nations Secretary General (UNSG) perished in an air crash during a UN mission.
• In trying to find a successor to Hammerjold, the two super powers USA and USSR could not agree.
• USSR refused to accept USA’s candidate.
• USA refused to accept USSR’s proposal of Troika (a three member committee from each of the Three Blocs).
• They agreed to have U Thant (who hailed from Burma, a co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement) as the Interim UNSG.
• The General Assembly later ratified him as the third UNSG.

• U Thant became the first Asian UNSG.
• U Thant retired after serving two terms as UNSG.

Post retirement

• After retirement, U Thant started writing his memoirs but was interrupted by failing health.
• His younger brother U Thaung was by his side in the final days, and helped bring U Thant’s body home.
  
• The higher authorities were told explicitly or implicitly not to pay respect to U Thant’s body.
• The Deputy Minister who paid respect to U Thant was dismissed effective immediately.
  
• Most people expected a decent ceremony (if not a State Funeral befitting the Head of the World Organization), but they learned that U Thant’s body was to be placed at the Kyandaw Cemetery.
  
• This led students to take U Thant’s body to the Main Campus and and make it a temporary (may be final) resting place for U Thant.
  
• Details can be read in the book by Htein Win (Dat Pone).
  
• There were three dissenting votes by the student representatives for the higher authorities’ proposal to have U Thant buried in the Mausoleum (in Cantonment Park), and they lost by 8-3 margin.
  
• The dark moments resulted in students being jailed or debarred, and some having to wait more months for their graduation ceremony.
  A few never had a chance to graduate.
  
• One participant had already distributed invitation for the wedding, but ended with the loss of his freedom for a few years and his love.

Book

• Htein Win Sar Pay published a book about the “U Thant Ah Yay Ah Khin”.
• The book contains rare photos (most of them recovered from an archive overseas).
  Many photos (that were in Burma) were destroyed “out of fear” for harassment / punishment.
• Met Ko Htain Win at the 5th ILF (Irrawaddy Literary Festival) in Mandalay in November, 2019.
  He was promoting another book 8-8-88.

U Khin Maung Zaw (EC76) wrote :

The sad thing I discovered at my last visit to Myanmar in Nov/Dec 2018 was that the tomb of U Thant has been closed and in disrepair. The entrance was padlocked, the compound was unkempt.

Ko Tin Maung Thant

• Ko Tin Maung Thant (“Ah Pho Gyi”, U Thant’s son) was my sister’s classmate at the Private Primary Boundary Road School (PPBRS).
• He left the school to join his father (then Permanent Secretary of the Burmese Delegation to the United Nations).
• Sadly, he passed away unexpectedly during his visit to Burma in 1962.
• His funeral service was grander than that of Commodore Than Pe (Minister of Health and Education), the first member of the 17-man Revolutionary Council to pass away.

Centennial Birthday

At the Centennial Birthday Celebration for U Thant held a few years back in the San Francisco Bay Area a few years back, I was a guest speaker.

• Early Burmese female equestrian
• Helped Bogyoke Aung San escape capture by hiding him in her car

ICS U Tin Tut

According to Dr. Thane Oke Kyaw Myint, his Bagyi (father’s elder brother) U Tin Tut was the first Burmese ICS (by invitation). U Tin Tut has four daughters. The youngest Daw Mya Saw Shin (Molly) is a lawyer and author. ICS examinations were held in UK and India.

ICS U Sein Tin

ICS U Sein Tin (Theikpan Maung Wa) co-founded Khit San Sar Pay with Saya U Thein Han (Zawgyi) and Saya U Wun (Minthuwun).

HE U Htin Kyaw (Dalaban) and Daw Htar Cho posted photos and writings (e.g adoption of Burmese terms by RU in 1930) of their father Saya Minthuwun.

ICS James Barrington

ICS James Barrington (RUBC Gold) served as Permanent Representative (equivalent to Ambassador) of the Burmese Delegation to the United Nations. He was succeeded by U Thant, who went on to become the Third UNSG and the first Asian UNSG.

Sithu U Tin

RUBC was founded in 1923 by Law Professor Sir Arthur Eggar. He pledged a third of his salary for operating RUBC. He was elected Life President. His successors include Commodore Than Pe, U Tun Thoung and Sithu U Tin.

Dr. Nyunt Tin, elder son of U Tin, stood First in Burma in the Matriculation of 1952 from St. Paul’s High School. U Han Tin, younger son, is RUBC Captain and Gold. He also became an Administrator and/or President of YUBC.

ICS U Ohn Maung

ICS U Ohn Maung (father of Saya U Tin Maung Thein, Ko Francis and Dr. Min Min) is an Arzani. He passed away on July 19, 1947 along with Bogyoke Aung San and six ministers in the meeting room.

U Tin Ohn

According to Dr. Tin Wa, his father U Tin Ohn (MA, BL) was in the Secretariat on July 19, 1947. He was a former tutor of Bogyoke Aung San. His boss (a minister) survived the shooting with a slight injury and requested U Tin Ohn to stay in the Secretariat.

Ko Tin Wa was interviewed recently by BBC about that day.

After Burma gained Independence, U Tin Ohn became the Secretary of Kachin State.

ICS U Shwe Mra

ICS U Shwe Mra was Chief Secretary of an early Burmese Government. According to his daughter Mra Hnin Si, U Shwe Mra provided the environment (e.g Pole Vault) for his children to become University and/or Burma Selected. Six brothers (out of the Ten Siblings) are Scholar Athletes.

I last met Ko Tun Mra at the RUBC/YUBC Annual Regatta in December 2019. He won medals in 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay at the University and National Championship. He won a Gold for the relay (anchored by Burma Champion Ko Soe Aung) at the 2nd SEAP Games held in Rangoon in December 1961. Ko Kyaw Mra (GBNF) won Silver, and later became National Coach. Ko Tun Mra and Ko Kyaw Mra won the Rag Regatta, but were Senior Novice Runner Up at the Monsoon Regatta. They were awarded RUBC Full Green.

Ko Soe Mra won Gold for Pole Vault at two SEAP Games. Ko Win Mra gave up competitive Pole Vault at the advice of doctors. He is a guitarist, vocalist and a diplomat (Myanmar Ambassador to UN, Chair of Myanmar Human Rights Commission). Ko Maung Maung Mra won Silver for Pole Vault at SEAP. Dr. Aung Mra followed his elder brothers as Pole Vault Champion.

• He is a scholar and a distinguished poet.
  His mentor is Saya U Pe Maung Tin, who successfully proposed to Rangoon University to establish the Burmese Department.
• He studied at RU and Oxford University.
• He headed the Translation Department, Rangoon University.
• He served as Professor of Burmese, Rangoon University and as Visiting Professor, Osaka University, Japan.
• He founded “Khit San Sar Pay” with Saya Zaw Gyi (U Thein Han) and Theikpan Maung Wa (ICS U Sein Tin).
  At one gathering, Sayagyi U Pe Maung Tin introduced the trio as “my three bright students, who are more talented than me.”
• His friends include Saya Dr. Hla Pe, Professor at SOAS University of London and U Tet Tut, who persuaded the British Museum to return artifacts to Burma for display at the National Archives.
• He is a Laureate Poet.
  Many aspiring poets learned from his poems (“Pyinma Ngoak Toe”, …) and books such as “Su Tu Pyu”.
  His literary friends led by “K” (BBS U Khin Zaw) and Tet Toe translated and published his poems and his classic short story “Bagyi Aung Nyar De”.

• He is a linguist and a lexicographer. His passion was to compile a comprehensive Burmese dictionary. Due to resource constraints, he could only partially complete his pet project.
• At the invitation of “Chit Mann Nwe” (Professor Harada, Osaka University), he taught and researched at Osaka University with Professor Harada and his team. His works include the Japanese – Burmese Dictionary and several research papers.
• Professor Harada never forgot his roots and used “Mann” (Mandalay) in his pen name. He won a literary prize in Japan for translating “Thway” into Japanese.

• He has two sons U Nyan Soe & U Htin Kyaw and a daughter Daw Htar Cho.

U Htin Kyaw

• He named his younger son as Htin Kyaw / Peter Wun / Maung Po / Dalaban. U Htin Kyaw wrote with the pen name “Dalaban”. He represented the Institute of Economics in Swimming, Water Polo and Rowing. He also played Tennis. He worked at the Institute of Economics, UCC, HIC and FERD. He helped run Daw Khin Kyi Foundation. He is a former President of Myanmar.

*** ဦးဝင်းဖေ (1927 -2021)

** ငယ်မည်

Richard Po Ohn

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** မိသားစု

ဖခင် — ဦးဘိုးအုန်း (တရားသူကြီး)

ဇနီး — ဆရာမ ဒေါ်ခင်မြလှိုင်

သား — ဦးသက်ဝင်း

သမီး — ဒေါ်ဇင်ဇင်

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** ပညာရေး

English Literature (Hons) ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်

Master of Public Administration (Harvard)

တက္ကသိုလ်ဝင်တန်း — Highest marks in Burma

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** လုပ်ငန်း အတွေ့ အကြုံ

ညွှန်ချုပ် National Archives

ညွှန်ချုပ် National Planning

မြန်မာစာအဖွဲ့ဝင်

Bilingual Author

Translator

Literary Critic

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** ကလောင် တချို့

မြဇင် — ဇနီး နဲ့ သမီး ကို ဂုဏ်ပြု

ကဗျာ့နရီ နှင့် နိမိတ်ပုံ

Win Pe

Epsilon

Po Yaza

Zagadaungzar

** Awards

အမျိုးသားစာပေ တသက်တာ Lifetime Achievement

ဝဏ္ဏကျော်ထင်

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** ဓာတ်ပုံ တချို့

ဦးဝင်းဖေ နဲ့ ဒေါ်ခင်မြလှိုင်

စာအုပ် — မြဇင်

စာအုပ် — မြဇင်၊ တက်တိုး

တလပြည့် ဆွမ်းအလှူ

Feedback

Aung Myaing wrote :

One of the precious Myanmar intellectuals.