Village boy from Jaffna who dreamed in leaps and bounds

Fortunately, one of them recognised him from the pictures in the newspapers when he won the Ceylon ‘Sports Star of the Year’ and took them into a pharmacy and told the pharmacist to let them stay until it was safe.

After graduating from UCLA, he returned to Ceylon but struggled to find employment in his field - Agriculture Education. He returned to the United States to earn his Master’s and then attempted to find employment in Ceylon again but unable to do so accepted an offer to teach in Sierra Leone at the University of Njala. Over his academic career, he worked at Universities in Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea and also for UNESCO.

It was in 1965 in Sierra Leone that he met and married the love of his life, Juliet Ann Power who had joined the US Peace Corps after graduating and was also posted to Sierra Leone. They had three children and eight grandchildren and would have celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary in May this year.

In 1994, after retiring at the age of sixty, Ethir wanted to ‘give back’ to his country and people for all the support he had received during his athletics career. He applied to the University of Jaffna, Kilinochchi Campus (Agriculture). Despite the dangers due to the ongoing war and severe embargoes on fuel, electricity, medicine, and other essential items, he returned to work on a one-year contract.

He stayed on in the Vanni as an unpaid volunteer after his contract ended, working tirelessly on humanitarian, education, and sports projects to aid civilians impacted by the conflict. He was in Kilinochchi in October 1995 when 500,000 civilians were displaced from the Jaffna peninsula to the Vanni and other areas. He was part of the team in Kilinochchi that received the Internally Displaced Persons and coordinated their emergency food and shelter.

He felt that all his training and academic career had prepared him for this mission and remained an unpaid volunteer for the rest of his life; living and working in the North & East of Sri Lanka for six to 10 months of every year from 1994 until the COVID pandemic in 2020. He relied on benefactors and the support of his wife, Juliet, to cover his expenses, focusing on education, sports, and helping the most marginalised communities.

All his life he was a forceful opponent of the caste system.

His last trip to Sri Lanka, whose citizenship he never relinquished despite being eligible for US citizenship, was February to April of 2023 when, at the age of 88 and despite contracting COVID while in Jaffna, he gave workshops in Jaffna and Kilinochchi for athletics coaches and athletes on coaching methods and talent recognition.

From 1994 until the end of the war, Ethir worked tirelessly for peace and a negotiated end to the war. The Harvard Initiative in 1997 was one of these efforts, which like countless others unfortunately failed. He travelled the world, meeting with governments, political leaders, human rights groups, and the Tamil Diaspora to advocate for civilians affected by the war, and later, the 2004 tsunami. Some of the most important work was what he accomplished after the end of the war in 2009.

His projects and initiatives spanned various sectors and included the differently-abled for whom he was a lifelong advocate. Notably, after the war ended he co-conceived the SERVE Institute, which made educational videos in Tamil of expert teachers teaching lessons in Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, and other subjects and distributed these to schools.

Ethir was also the force behind the groundbreaking study in 2014 that consulted thousands of parents, educators, community leaders, and administrative staff. The Northern Education System Review (NERS) made wide-ranging, revolutionary recommendations to improve the education system, many incorporated by the Northern Province

Ministry of Education and some by the Ministry of Education in Colombo that also led to similar studies in other parts of the country. (https://www.edudept.np.gov.lk/ reviewreporteng.html)

Ethir believed in helping people no matter their ethnicity, religion, or linguistic background. In his travels and coaching throughout Sri Lanka, he identified athletes who he thought could compete at an international level. The first of these was Manjula Kumara Wijesekara, who would go on to be the Sri Lankan record holder in High Jump. Manjula could only speak a little English and Ethir almost no Sinhala when Ethir invited him to the US. Manjula lived with Ethir’s family for a year in LA during which Ethir coached him and he took intensive English classes. He eventually earned a full scholarship to the University of Southern California (USC).

Ethir did the same with current Sri Lankan high jump record holder Ushan Thiwanka Perera, and high jumpers Nalin Priyadarshana, and Purnima Gunarathna who all stayed at his home while he coached and assisted them to receive scholarships to US universities.

Olympic Silver medalist Susanthika Jayasinghe also stayed at his home and was coached by him for three months in 2007 when she made her ‘comeback’. She won the Bronze medal at the World Championships in Osaka, Japan that year. Both Susanthika and Manjula helped in post-war coaching clinics that Ethir conducted in the North.

In 1998, President Chandrika Kumaratunga Bandaranaike offered him the ‘Deshabandu’ honorific which he respectfully declined, stating in his letter to her, “I cannot in good conscience accept such a title when my people are suffering and the war is continuing”.

He was the last of his six siblings: brothers Sellathurai Nithiyanantham, Nagalingam Ratnasingam, Nagalingam Rajasingam, Nagalingam Segarajasingam, Nagalingam Pararajasingam, and sister Parameswary Nadarajah.

He is survived by his wife of 57 years, Juliet Ethirveerasingam (Power); his children Sakunthala, Nahulan, and Arjunan; his eight grandchildren Ryan Corsaut, Samantha Quezada, Cassandra Quezada, Benjamin Quezada, Devin Ethirveerasingam, Lila Ethirveerasingam, Hayden Ethirveerasingam, and Nara Ethirveerasingam; his son-in-law Paul Quezada, and daughters-in-law Jennifer Ethirveerasingam and Nimmi Harasgama.

In lieu of flowers, his family requested contributions be made to a charity working in Sri Lanka.