Mr. Cooray remained the fearless administrator who never spared the rod, a gentleman par excellence. The grade ten building was unofficially called the “Cooray Building .” As a young teacher, his mentoring was immensely impactful on my career. He belonged to a rare species of teachers.
His versatile interests inspired all students of diverse interests .
Yes he never failed to check whether Royal has come to the finals of Inter-School Shakespeare Drama Competition. Thanks to Ananda College for the values imbibed in him and with Royal traditions, Mr. Cooray indeed stood out among the rest. An excellent mathematics teacher, Mr. Cooray never missed a single class being an administrator. He started training youngsters by introducing the Monitors’ Meeting every morning. So it was the monitor’s responsibility to check the cleanliness of the class. There were no ” sweepers” those days. Sudents swept the class according to the Duty Roster, thus recognized the dignity of labour. All monitors had to report to him with the class CRB and the monitor and the assistant monitor had to make sure that the teachers endorsed the daily work in the respective period. Obviously no class was left unattended as the monitor reminded the substitute teacher of his /her task.
Can we bring back the Cooray era in to Royal O/L classes again ? I sincerely wish so… May all merits of his legendary leadership and his genuine love for students be upon him. And may his journey through samsara be as short as possible and may he attain Nibbana !
Mrs. Lakshmi Attygalle (1984- 2016 Royal College Staff)