Pen of presidential memories

By Salma Yusuf

Recently retired Wing Commander of the Sri Lanka Air Force, Sunil Maddumage has many interesting stories to relate about his days in the SLAF, and among them about a souvenir from the recent past, a pen used by two former American Presidents.

Wing Commander Maddumage welcoming Clinton.

It happened when he met Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush Snr when they made a post-tsunami visit to the island. “I was the first person to greet them at the airport. Protocol has it that the Wing Commander should be the first to do so. The greeting and handshake symbolize that we are extending an assurance of security in the territory we are controlling.”

Bush Sr. signing the book

Accompanying the two former leaders, he requested them to sign the visitors’ book when they visited the Koggala Air Force base.

Instantly obliging, Clinton drew his pen out of his pocket and signed the book after which he handed it over to Bush Senior to do the same. The pen was left on the visitors’ book. “Having realized this, after a few minutes passed, I picked up the pen and went to return it to its rightful owner.”

It was then that, Clinton seemed to almost instinctively reward the Wing Commander. “That’s a great gesture. Please keep the pen as a souvenir from me,” he said, handing over his pen to Wing Commander Maddumage. It remains a treasured keepsake for him.

“When you come from a background and circumstances that I grew up in, it means more than anyone could know,” he says.

Growing up in Galle without the support of a father, he had to shoulder the burden of fending for his family, from a young age.

Joining the SLAF in 1982, he served in Vavuniya, Ampara and Koggala, among many other bases.

At Koggala he had to face the challenge of two major national disasters, the flash floods in May 2003 in the southern regions of the country and the tsunami operations in Galle. Coordinating 22 Internally Displaced Persons centres, he says, were high points in his career.