He was quintessentially a renaissance humanist

Jayati Weerakoon

Jayati Weerakoon passed away on July 29, 2021 in Austin, Texas. He was born in 1928 in Madakumburumulla, Sri Lanka. He went to schools in Mirihanegama and completed his school education at Maliyadeva College in Kurunegala. He was an ardent Indian Classical music lover and studied Indian classical music and was playing the Dilruba in Radio Ceylon concerts at a young age. He studied Civil Engineering at the University of Peradeniya and graduated in 1950.

Jayati was quintessentially a renaissance humanist, as the breadth and range of his expertise and scholarly interests bear evidence. He recently published a book Buddhist Prints with Descriptive Poems containing extraordinarily sensitive and erudite translations of Piyadasa Sirisena’s poetry that accompanied M. Sarlis’s paintings in the 1929 original. Not limited to academic pursuits, he was also an avid hobbyist who had an amazing can-do attitude and undertook to master whatever that interested him, including car restoration and repair, photography, electronics, music, and home repair.

As a profession he worked in construction and was involved in building commercial factory premises, water supply tanks and also road bridges. He was part of the team that built the bridge for the movie Bridge on the River Kwai which was filmed in Sri Lanka, on which he worked with David Lean. He was also a member of the team that built Sri Lanka’s first satellite antennae station where he collaborated with Arthur C. Clark. He served as a civil engineer in Sri Lanka for over 35 years, working at the companies ECC, Samuel & Sons, and Walker & Greig.

In 1987 he immigrated to the US to Wichita, Kansas with his family. He obtained his PE license and worked as a Civil Engineer at the Shawnee County Health Department in Topeka, Kansas. He retired in 2004, and enjoyed working full-time in his myriad hobbies, which had expanded to include the translation and interpretation of ancient Buddhist texts, painting, wood working, gardening, making Indian musical instruments, and creating fountain pens, to mention a few.

Jayati was a loving husband, a supportive brother-in-law, a nurturing father and grandfather, and a caring friend. He is survived by his wife of 70 years, Indrani, daughter Rekha, three sons Asanga, Mithra and Ishta, three daughters-in-law, a son-in-law and seven grandchildren.