Jay Liyanage, Hon. Consul for Sri Lanka in the USA here on a holiday

Sharm de ALWIS

I had seen Jay Liyanage in a group photograph of a team captained by his brother, the fine Featherweight boxer who, in my opinion, is only a tad behind Albert Perera, Leslie Handunge, HP & CP Jayasuriya who took the country’s Boxing to levels never imagined were possible.

The picture depicting boxers of varying weights would have made any reader think that Jay Liyanage was also into Boxing. He writes to me correcting the error and stating that he never boxed for Ceylon/Sri Lanka.

He says that he was more into Motor Sports although he had dabbled in boxing as a schoolboy at Ananda and that he had encouraged his younger brothers Sumith, Kit and Lakhi to take to boxing.

He had been Treasurer of the St. Michael’s Boxing Club when Lanka Silva was President, Bob Harvie VP during the time that Anton John, Vincent and Geoff VanCuylenberg and P.G. Neil were performing exceptionally well in the ring.

As a racing driver he did represent Ceylon when he was elected three times Manager and Chef D’ Mission of Ceylon Motor Racing teams in the late 60s to Coimbatore, Madras and Bangalore.

The teams were captained by Shanthi Gunaratne (Cars) and Zacky Deen (Motor Cycles). Later he and T.M. Deen had officially covered for the two Lake House newspapers, the Los Angeles, Olympics in 1984.

Jay Liyanage has devoted his life to playing Godfather to Sri Lankans living in or visiting the East coast of the USA.

Even before he was appointed in 1990 as the Honorary Counsel for Sri Lanka in the USA, covering New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, he who had embarked on his last semesters of a Bachelor of Business Administration Programme (training young executives from the world over) at the University of Massachusetts, Jay found that Sri Lankan students on studies were in the deep end and needed substantial help.

And so he opened his doors to them even though some of them had been complete strangers. He was the benevolent shepherd.

Jay Liyanage has gone on to higher merits as a Rotarian in NJ/USA like when he obtained financial assistance through The Gift of Life Inc. for those indigent Sri Lankan children with congenital heart problems seeking medical and surgical care in the US and later brought the programme to Sri Lanka.

In the early 70s, as Secretary (later President) of the Ceylon Association of New York, he has held in ‘Sri Lanka Day’ in his hometown Denville for a continuous 33 years with SL Ambassadors to the UN and USA and US Congressmen in attendance.

He also initiated the SL/USA Limited Overs cricket tournament with Ambassadors Jayantha Dhanapala, Rodney Perera and Prasad Kariyawasam as past captains, vying for the Consul’s Challenge Trophy originally presented by Jay Liyanage.