Appreciations

The legendary Lawrence Gunatilaka, who arrived in the United States in the early 1950s, was considered a pioneer among Sri Lankans, exploring uncharted territory for his countrymen. He enjoyed the joke that he landed in America “before Christopher Columbus”.

Former Sri Lanka Ambassador Neville Kanakaratne once remarked: “The British had their Lawrence of Arabia, and the Sri Lankans had their Lawrence of America.” Lawrence, who passed away recently at the age of 89, had one thing in common with the other, world-famous Lawrence: a love of motorcycles.

In his heyday, Lawrence Gunatilaka made an overland trip by motorbike through Europe and Asia and all the way to Colombo. His adventures, which included a perilous ride through the rugged mountains of the NorthWest Frontier Province, a place that even the colonial British found daunting, made the pages of the Ceylon Observer at the time.

Lawrence was friend and confidante of several ambassadors, including Shirley Amerasinghe, Sir Senarat (RSS) Gunawardena, Sir Claude Corea, M. F. de S. Jayaratne, the ex-Governor-General (then ambassador) William Gopallawa, and Neville Kanakaratne. He was considered an integral part of the Sri Lankan diplomatic community, even though he had never served in the foreign service.

Lawrence had the privilege of sitting with our first delegation to the United Nations, in the General Assembly Hall, on that historic day in 1955 when Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) gained admission to the UN.

Back in 1955, the Sri Lanka Mission was literally homeless, with no office of its own. Our first Permanent Representative to the UN had to shuttle between New York and Washington DC because his role as ambassador to the US took precedence over his role with the United Nations.

Lawrence magnanimously offered his apartment for the service of his country, just as he had offered his home to scores of his countrymen arriving in a friendless New York in those early days. The late Neville Kanakaratne would say that Lawrence’s apartment in West 73rd Street was the first home of the Sri Lankan Mission to the United Nations. In fact, Lawrence’s apartment address adorned the first set of letterheads printed by the Mission.

When Lawrence married Mildred in 1971, the late Ambassador Shirley Amerasinghe hosted the wedding reception at his Park Avenue apartment. During one of his regular visits to Colombo, Lawrence was hosted to lunch at Queen’s House by William Gopallawa, who had known Lawrence when the former Governor-General was Sri Lanka’s ambassador in Washington DC. The lunch with the Governor-General was a rare privilege accorded to a visiting Sri Lankan from the States.

As one of the pioneer Sri Lankans in America, Lawrence played host to countless Sri Lankans who arrived in New York as tourists, students, international civil servants, delegates and migrants.

Lawrence was a household name among the Sri Lankan expatriate community in the US.

A household name to expat Lankans in the US