I

was 9-years-old when Margaret Thatcher became the first Englishwoman to reach the office of 10 Downing Street in 1979.

Beforehand, my family lived in England from 1975 to 1977. When I returned to Indonesia, the language barrier was evident.

I read the news about prime minister Thatcher with great interest since there were only three ladies who had become prime ministers before Thatcher came into office ' Sirimavo Bandaranaike in Sri Lanka, Indira Gandhi in India and Golda Meir in Israel.

Therefore, in my young mind, it certainly took courage, years of hard work, dedication and perseverance to reach such a position.

Years later, I read about Thatcher's upbringing in Grantham from her memoirs in The Path to Power which my mother bought in Barnes and Noble in the summer of 1996.

Although her father was a Methodist preacher and a grocer who later became mayor of Grantham, Thatcher and her elder sister were not allowed to be idle. Both her parents had instilled their values of discipline, hard work and sense of duty in Thatcher and her elder sister since their early years.

The daily tasks of doing chores at home, serving customers in the grocery store downstairs and completing all homework every night including Sunday as well as volunteering in the church and community certainly equipped Thatcher for greater tasks ahead.

Her father's advice to 'never do things just because other people do them' and quotations that she read from The Winds of Fate by Ella Wheeler Wilcox and The Ladder of St. Augustine by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow prepared her for the hard decisions that she had to make in the future.

 I will always remember her as the prime minister who was kind enough to reply to my letter that I wrote her when I was in Grade 6 of primary school. I still keep the letter, dated Nov. 10 1982, from 10 Downing Street which was signed by her staff.

Audrey Caron Rumamby
Depok, West Java