Appreciations

He guided Kingswood through the rapids

The centenary of the birth of Peter Harold Nonis, dedicated schoolteacher and Principal fell on November 13. I was a student in the junior school at Kingswood when he was appointed Principal in 1942, replacing Englishman F.A.I. Utting. Mr. Nonis, the first Sri Lankan Principal since the days of L.E. Blaze, the founder of the school, was one of a distinguished line of Sri Lankans of the 1940s and 50s who took positions in public life hitherto reserved for British officials, mercantile executives and educationists. 

Mr. Utting had not been a great success as a Principal, and Nonis's inheritance was thus a difficult one. The senior staff had lost confidence in Mr. Utting's leadership and two of them, J.C.A. Corea and Dudley de Silva left the school, to become in succession, Principals of Royal College, an indication of the quality of teachers that Kingswood had lost. Fortunately many of the teachers rallied round the new Principal, whose immediate task was to repair the damage that had been done. A cadre of younger graduate teachers either fresh from the University of Ceylon, or from Indian Universities were appointed to the school. The task was to halt the deterioration of academic standards that had set in by the early and mid-1940s at senior school level. 

1942 was not the most propitious time to take over the administration of a school in Kandy. When Japanese bombs came down on Colombo and Trincomalee in April that year, there was near panic in Colombo and large numbers of people moved to Kandy and the towns nearby. Some of the distinguished schools in Colombo including S. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia were affected when their buildings were taken over by the British and Allied Forces. Despite all the problems he had, Nonis took the bold decision to let S. Thomas share the buildings and facilities of Kingswood. Thus an unusual dual session system was organized between the two schools for a couple of years, with the Thomian session being held in the afternoons. 

An even more difficult problem loomed ahead. Most missionary schools like Kingswood had to decide whether to join the new free education system or remain independent fee-levying schools, an exceedingly difficult choice. Nonis decided that Kingswood should enter the new educational system. 

Kingswood was fortunate that it had a man of Nonis's vision and integrity to handle the transition from the old to the new. 

During his 15 years at Kingswood, Nonis guided the school safely through the rapids of an era of remarkable changes in education and in politics. His record of dedicated service to the school, unmatched since the early years of its existence, made him the obvious choice to fill the post of Principal of his old school Wesley, when it became vacant in 1957. 

Over the years as the process of bureaucratization of education became more pronounced one reflected on the past, on principals and teachers of the past, and often used the example of men like P.H. Nonis as a point of comparison, in the more troubled times when school principals and teachers could no longer resist bureaucratic and political pressures. 

Professor K.M. de Silva 

The 'Viveks' we all loved 

On October 27, the cruel hand of death snatched from our midst an extraordinary human being,"Viveks" to all his friends. The memory of his premature death that fateful afternoon, tragically run over by a train while attempting to cross the unprotected rail track at Wellawatte to join his wife, Indra and other family members for lunch at the 'Beach Waadiya', will never be erased from our minds. 

He was born on February 28, 1944 to an illustrious and respected family in Vaddukoddai. Born and bred in Vaddukoddai, Viveks received his primary education at Jaffna College. He never took his studies seriously and was up to all the schoolboy pranks much to the embarrassment of his respected father and studious elder brother. 

In 1965 he came to Colombo and joined Associated Management Services Ltd., of the reputed audit firm KPMG Ford Rhodes Thornton & Company, as a management trainee. Tall and handsome Viveks with his preference for sartorial elegance was the cynosure of all eyes. While working and studying for CIMA examinations at AMS he displayed his ability to move on with life with an equal balance of fun and seriousness. 

In the late '60s, a group of Russian ballerinas arrived in Colombo for a performance and were accommodated at the Taprobane Hotel. They were strictly debarred from venturing out. However, Viveks with his usual charm sneaked out with four beautiful damsels via the fire escape with the connivance of three of his close friends to enjoy a night of dancing at the Little Hut, Mount Lavinia! 

His father, who rarely visited Colombo, once accompanied by his elder son came to see how Viveks was faring. To his utter amazement he found him studying one night at the home of colleague Lionel Ponnaiah. The joke was that the shock of seeing his son studying resulted in the grand old man having a heart attack on returning to Jaffna. 

On completion of the CIMA examinations and management training he joined the Ceylon Hotels Corporation where he was Chief Internal Auditor for a number of years. In 1976, Viveks entered Leeds University in England to follow an intensive programme in hotel management. 

In 1978, Viveks took up a senior managerial position at the Ramada Hotel in Bahrain. Thereafter, he joined the Holiday Inn chain of hotels and served as Financial Controller at their hotels in Abu Dhabi, Jeddah and Muscat for several years. Later he took up employment at the Move & Pick Hotel, Beijing, China and moved to the Omni Hotel in Vietnam as General Manager. 

His management career culminated with his appointment in 1994 as General Manager of 'The Land Mark' in Vietnam, a company owned by the Peninsula Group, Honkong and Shanghai Ltd. 

By nature Viveks was a pro-active person. His greatest asset was his ability to motivate and delegate responsibility to his staff and achieve positive results to the satisfaction of all, with no great exertion on his part.

Good-bye my dear friend, may your soul rest in peace. 

A friend