Amanda Toh-Steckler is rising strong
Amanda Toh-Steckler gets real about life after loss and how she’s keeping her late husband’s legacy alive while building her own.
It’s been a little over two years since Amanda Toh-Steckler lost her husband, Vincent, and she feels more comfortable talking about him now. “We would have been together for 20 years today – if he were still alive. He was a good man. He gave back to society, to the community. I want to tell the world what he did and carry on his legacy,” says the 51-year-old, upbeat but shaded with grief.
Theirs was a love story that almost didn’t happen. Amanda and Vince, who was a vice-president of software company Symantec at the time, were introduced to each other by a mutual friend. “I had just come out of a relationship, so I told him I wasn’t ready,” says Amanda. “He said, ‘I will wait, I will be patient.’ And every Monday he would send a big bouquet of flowers to my office at Ngee Ann City, where I was working at a property development company. He was romantic and persistent. It took a while for us to be an item, but we had been talking every day since our first date.”
There’s a saying that when you marry someone, you marry the family. Serendipitously, the two households – with teenage children no less – got on like a house on fire. “Vince had two daughters and I have a son from our previous marriages. Together, we have a girl and a boy. We’re a blended family and everyone gets along so well,” says Amanda. Holidays with the entire brood are an annual tradition.
Raised in a sprawling extended household of over 50 people, Amanda is no stranger to having a large family. Her father, a flower plantation owner, was one of 11 children, and three generations lived side-by-side in the same estate in Sembawang. They worked the farms and ate together, like a village community.
Speaking of generations, I ask Amanda if she’s a grandmother. She says yes, but talking about her two-year-old grandson dredges up painful memories. “Vince died 15 days before he was born, on June 1. I had a major spinal surgery to treat a vertebral infection seven days before his car accident. So when I got the news, I wished I was the one who died,” she says, her throat catching. “I’m sorry. It was so bad.”
A local news outlet had reported that the former Avast CEO’s red 1959 Jaguar XK150 was struck in Orange County, California, by a 19-year-old driving a BMW 5490i. The deadly collision sent the vintage car up an embankment, where it broke off a highway sign before violently flipping three times. “I’d always told my husband to be careful on the this one took his life. Driving isn’t just about you; others can also be careless. The BMW was going so fast that there was no chance of Vince surviving. The driver also had a record of speeding,” she says, a tinge of anger showing in her voice.
Despite losing her husband to a fatal car crash, Amanda did not relinquish her passion for performance driving. In fact, she’s flying to Scotland for a nine-day drive with McLaren the week following our chat. “I love speed,” says the adrenaline junkie, who owns the biggest collection of McLarens in the world. She currently has seven of the supercars, having sold two.
“Before he passed, we’d go for club drives all over the world with McLaren – in Portugal, Pebble Beach, Switzerland to Lake Como… We were each other’s co-pilot. In the first few months after he was gone, it was so hard for me to drive. But I knew if I didn’t try to overcome that fear, I would never drive again. I miss him when I drive, but it is also my connection to him.”
It’s obvious that the pain is still profound and very present for Amanda, but it’s not just her own feelings she’s thinking about. Preserving her late husband’s legacy, Amanda is furthering their service to Magical Bridge Foundation, an American non-profit organisation dedicated to building socially inclusive, physically accessible playgrounds for children with physical and cognitive disabilities, autism, visual and hearing impairments, as well as those who are ageing and medically fragile.
The Stecklers have been one of the biggest supporters of the cause since the first revolutionary playground in Palo Alto was completed in 2015. There are now six playgrounds open to the public in the San Francisco Bay Area and 10 more in development around the world. Singapore will be home to two in the next few years: one in Sun Plaza Park near Tampines Town Centre and the other, inspired by the William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings, outside Singapore National Museum.
“After we opened that first Magical Bridge playground, we saw people travelling for hours just to spend time there. That’s when we knew we needed to make more spaces like this. You sit there, watch all these kids having a great time, picking up joy, compassion and everything else, you know? I want to give kids with special needs a place to hang out in Singapore. And we’ve got the expertise and resources to make it happen – to make life better for those who are differently-abled,” says the newly-appointed ambassador of the National Museum.
Amanda’s commitment to supporting those with disabilities dates back to her youth. During that time, she volunteered for the Society For The Physically Disabled and was assigned to care for a wheelchair-bound woman. The experience solidified Amanda’s belief in the importance of social integration for people with disabilities.
“She was living in an apartment block that had no lift access on every floor. I was her caregiver and eventually became her soulmate. Every two to three weeks, I would take her out – for checkups or just to be outdoors. I’d carry her wheelchair down to the lift landing and help her as she made her way down. It was painful to watch, and even more painful to hear her story. This is why I feel strongly about the work of Magical Bridge. Otherwise, these kids with special needs would just stay home.”
These days, Amanda sees her late husband in Billy, the youngest member of the Steckler family, who is mirroring his father’s path by pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computer science at the late Steckler’s alma mater, University of California, Irvine. “They share many similarities,” Amanda notes, adding that Vince was one of the most successful entrepreneurs to come out of the school, and he endowed USD 10.4 million (SGD 14 million) in funds to support art history students and establish a centre focused on making the field of computing more inclusive. In preparation of her son’s enrolment, Amanda is currently converting her two houses in Newport Beach into a multi-generation home for her family.
Having spent five years in Palo Alto and launched three F&B establishments in California, the entrepreneur and avid cook feels just as at home in the US as in Singapore, But she still looks forward to going back when her son goes to university.
“I introduced Killiney Kopitiam to the US when I realised there were no authentic Singaporean restaurants to take my kids and friends to. Each time I returned to Singapore, I had to take lots of sauces back to the US for cooking! At first, the owners of Killiney Kopitiam were hesitant about franchising, but they came around and now it’s become so popular.” Building on the success of her first coffee shop, Amanda, along with Singaporean chef Nora Haron, opened Indonesian cafe Kopi Bar and a Nusantara Californian restaurant named SanDai in Walnut Creek.
As Amanda steps out of the chair of the powder room to change into her first Gucci look for our cover spread, I notice an air of quiet fortitude about her. I ask her what she’s learnt in the past few years: “Be healthy and live for the moment. You’ll never know what will happen to you. Don’t worry too much about material things; you can’t take them with you when you leave this world. It’s what you leave behind that matters.”
Fashion Direction JOHNNY KHOO
Art Direction AUDREY CHAN
Photography JOEL LOW
Fashion Styling JACQUIE ANG
Hair AUNG APICHAI/ARTISTRY STUDIOS, using KEVIN.MURPHY
Make-Up WEE MING, using GUCCI BEAUTY
Photography Assistance EDDIE TEO
Fashion Assistance SIT SHI JIE
Top image credits: Embellished top and embellished skirt, both Bottega Veneta
The information in this article is accurate as of the date of publication.
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