Sunday Times 2
Remembering Rex de silva
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Three years have passed by since the death of Rex de Silva, a doyen of journalism and an editor who led by example. Starting his career in the early 1960s at the Weekend – the Sunday tabloid of the now defunct Independent Newspapers Limited – Rex worked with commitment to turn it into the most popular Sunday weekly English newspaper in Sri Lanka.
Rex later became the editor of the Weekend and in 1977 he was also appointed as the editor of the Sun, the daily newspaper of the group. As the editor-in-chief of both papers, Rex often worked in office for more than ten hours a day, while often the sub editors would wake him at 2 am to seek guidance on developing stories.
In 1990, Rex went to Brunei where he was the editor-in-chief of the “Borneo Bulletin”. After his retirement, he went to the United States to live with his family and even though in his seventies, Rex got involved in a mission of giving comfort and strength to the elderly through music.
He returned to Sri Lanka in 2015 for a holiday but died on November 16 in a Colombo hospital.