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“If a Sri Lankan won the spelling bee, he or she would be covered,” Gamage, 38, said. The Express also highlighted the accomplishments of immigrants and their children. The program began in San Francisco at KFJC-FM, pictured here, before migrating to Los Angeles when the family relocated south in 1985.(Sahan Gamage) Hassina Leelarathna co-hosted a bilingual radio show called “Tharanga,” focusing on news, music and culture. The couple also broadcast a radio program, “Tharanga,” in English and Sinhalese for a Sri Lankan community that in Los Angeles County numbers nearly 20,000 and supports about 10 Buddhist temples.Īfter her husband died in 2006, Leelarathna ran the newspaper on her own, spotlighting the decades-long civil war in Sri Lanka as well as issues faced by new immigrants in this country, including healthcare, education and the economy.
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Leelarathna worked full time at other jobs, most recently as a financial analyst for the Department of Veterans Affairs. The paper initially published biweekly, in English, moving completely online in 2015.įor her, it was an “intense” labor of love. Friends say she used to come up with “all sorts of ideas, but we could only pursue one cause at a time.”(Sahan Gamage)Īfter moving to California from her native Sri Lanka, Leelarathna founded the Sri Lankan Express in 1981 with her husband, Deeptha Leelarathna.
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Sri Lankan journalist Hassina Leelarathna, pictured in 2007 at the Federal Building in Los Angeles, pushed fellow immigrants to never forget their homeland. 17 after battling lung cancer for the last five years, said her son, Sahan Gamage. and an activist who spurred fellow immigrants to help when disasters struck their homeland, has died at age 73. Hassina Leelarathna, a co-founder of the only Sri Lankan newspaper in the U.S.