“MAXIE’S MEMORIES” – By Des Kelly

I take this chance to introduce Maxwell (Maxie) Gerreyn to our eLanka website, with great pride. I doubt that no-one in Ceylon during the 1950’s could say that they were unaware of the fact that the name Gerreyn was immediately associated with “Newspaper Cartoons”, political & otherwise. Everyone who could read, generally got themselves “The Daily News”, scanned the headlines, and then would quickly leaf through the pages of the newspaper to have a look at what the cartoonist had in store for them.

First, it was Aubrey Collette, a name synonymous with cartoons, then came Mark Gerreyn, brother of Max, who was to become, not only another superb cartoonist, but also one of the best loved journalists in the Ceylon Newspaper industry of the time. He was suddenly lost to this industry, and, a personal eulogy to Mark was emailed to me by brother Max, written by another journalist, obviously proud to have known Mark, plus a brotherly love that has not changed an iota, even after 29 long years.

We, at eLanka welcome Max, and undoubtedly, all our readers will also love his portraits/cartoons coming to them from “one of the best” from old Ceylon.