“A PROUD BENEDICTIAN” – By Des Kelly
St. Benedict’s College, in Ceylon, as I remember it, was another famous Catholic School from which emerged many Benedictians who left College to make a name for themselves in various fields of endeavour. Mark Gerreyn was one who did exactly this. At a time when there were many “Artists” around, Mark took this talent even further, to eventually become one of the best Cartoonists in our little Island.
Mark was the elder brother of Maxwell Gerreyn, a personal friend and regular contributor of Cartoons, himself, to eLanka, it seems that the brothers-Gerreyn were both extremely talented, and although I had never met Mark, and as he has now passed-on (R.I.P.Mark), I did request Max to fill me in, with some details of this other famous Cartoonist of Sri Lanka, and sincerely thank him for his story of the brother who he loved. Folks, I am proud and privileged to know Maxie Gerreyn, but here is the story (in brief) of brother Mark.
Desmond Kelly.
(Editor-in-Chief). eLanka.
My brother Mark – by Max Gerreyn
Mark Oswald Alexander Gerreyn was entirely a product of St.Benedict’s as were a very long line of his father, grandfather, two brothers, uncles and cousins. St. Benedict’s has turned out many boys who reached the top in a varied assortment of professions and skills but Mark was and remains today as the Colleges’ first great national political cartoonist. He was my immediate elder brother by a margin of six plus years and left us tragically at a youthful 58 in November 1989 . In that relatively brief span he reached the top of his profession as a political and humorous cartoonist and was showing off the best of his talents as a visual satirist when the bell tolled so suddenly for him. At the time of his passing he was acknowledged as having been for the previous thirty five years Sri Lanka’s best political cartoonist after Aubrey Collette. Mark took over the mantle of Collette after Lake House editors Cecil Graham, Tarzie Vittachchi and Cartoonist Collette were compelled to flee the country to escape imprisonment for their journalistic disapproval of the new Political Masters who had replaced the old UNP regime.
Mark’s whole formal education was at St.Benedict’s where from a very young age he had displayed a prodigious talent for drawing and cartooning. Although he dropped out from Commercial studies at College around 1950/51, he was acclaimed by his friends and teachers and received the best tutoring and guidance by that legendary Art Master KS Perera . Mark did also study briefly under Mudaliyar Amerasekera and followed a stint at the Heywood (later Government) College of Fine Art in Colombo when portrait specialist JDA Perera was principal. Soon after Mark found his first employment as a steno-typist with the Free Lanka Insurance Company. In September 1953 Mark married his teen-aged sweetheart Leonie and Fortune smiled broadly when shortly after The Lake House Newspaper Group offered him a job as cartoonist on the `Dinamina’ . This paper was in Sinhala and at that time had a wider readership than the Ceylon Daily News. I believe Mark coped because he got peer help with translations and technical issues and anyway management quickly transferred him to work in the more familiar English medium of `The Daily News’. His skills blossomed as a very astute and humorous political commentator and the icing came when Mark created his iconic character strip-cartoon `Simple Simeon’ In today’s idiom `Simple Simeon’ went viral and to those aged enough to recall it remains as Mark’s fabulously autobiographical, droll and very hilarious visual cartoon legacy.
My brother was warmly befriended by Presidents Jayawardene and Premadasa and was honoured with a presentation on national televison by the former. President JR in fact had his own personal collection of his favourite Mark Gerreyn cartoons which are to be found in the book `JR in Cartoons’ edited by the JR Jayawardene Cultural Centre. Mark won international recognition when the prestigious International Pavilion of Humour honoured him five times over a period of ten years and The International Salon of Cartoons selected his cartoons on nuclear war and the horror of famine as exceptional works for year 1986. Uniquely these plaudits came for Mark after he had moved on from his long service with Lake House and served the `Sun’ and `The Island’ in turn as their leading cartoonist. His last two cartoons were published posthumously one on Friday the 17th November 1989 – poignantly barely twenty-fours after he had passed away. The second and final work titled `Born Shri” appeared on Sunday the 19thNovember 1989 in `The Weekend Sunday’. On the Monday of 20th November a Tribute by a colleague titled `He left an indelible Mark in Lankan media’ was published in the `Sun’ – written with such admiration, description and fondness that it swells me with heart-bursting pride to know that I was privileged to have had Mark as my own flesh and blood.
Mark’s family and mine and St.Benedict’s couldn’t be prouder of a pupil who Left A Mark!
