Dodwell passed away peacefully on December 29, 2000 in Melbourne Australia. I had the good fortune of knowing Dodwell over a period of nearly sixty years. After a brilliant college and university career, he passed the Ceylon Civil Service Examination around 1946. I was associated with him in the early fifties in the Ministry of Defence and External Affairs under the late D. S. Senanayake, Sri Lanka’s first Prime Minister a truly great patriot and statesman. Dodwell was the Chief of Protocol. His unfailing wit and humour and his ability to move with kings and princes and not lose the common touch made him an-ideal choice for this post.

He was later appointed to serve as the head of several Government Departments. The Mercantile Sector was quick to grab his services and he took up a very lucrative appointment as Secretary of the Ceylon Estate Employers Federation. He rendered invaluable service to this sector as a super negotiater and participated as a Sri Lankan delegate to conferences of the International Labour Organisation held in Geneva and also attended International conferences of the Rome based Food and Agricultural Organisation as a Sri Lankan delegate.

He was thereafter appointed as a Working Director to the well known British firm of Carson Cumberbarch & Co. After an excellent record of service in the private sector, Dodwell took up an appointment as an International Civil Servant with the International Labour Organisation and served in Thailand, from where he eventually retired.

As a colleague of Dodwell in the public as well as the private sector, I was aware that he had a vast circle of friends wherever he served. He was at all times a loyal, kind and helpful person, ever ready to advice and assist anyone who sought or needed his guidance.

He was an ideal husband, father and grandfather. His wife Sita his only child Ranjith his daughter-in-law, grandchildren in Australia and family members in Sri Lanka will no doubt acutely feel this irreparable loss. However they will find some degree of comfort and consolation in that there are several persons scattered all over the globe who will share this grief with them and lighten their burden. God, in his mercy has only taken back a precious loan afforded them for so long. May the lord grant him eternal rest and let perpetual light shine upon him. Farewell, good friend until we all meet on that beautiful shore never to be parted again.

May he rest in peace in his heavenly abode!
A. M. S. Perera