Stories of the Armenian Genocide
This is a piece that my Great Aunt, Dr. Arlene Demirjian, who has lived most of her life in New York City, wrote including the transcription of the accounts from her mother and their family during and after the Armenian Genocide and how they made it to America. I shared it here so their memory and story will never be FORGOTTEN.
A Family’s Story
By Dr. Arlene Demirjian — January 2018
Families have secrets. I knew mine did; I knew it even as a very small child. I wondered why I had only one grandparent. I wondered why the adults talked about aksor (exile) but would never tell me what is was. I wondered why my questions were met with silence.
My story is really two stories. One is that of Armenian immigrants who came to this country and achieved the American dream. The other story is of my mother’s family — and their fight for survival as over one million Armenians died. It is the story of aksor.
As Armenians my family lived on historic land that was part of the Ottoman Empire. My father, Hovanes (or, later- John), was born in Fenesse in 1885. My mother, Siranoush- (Sarah), was born in Everek in 1905. They married in Cyprus in 1933. They were among the generations and generations of Armenians who had lived in peace with their Turkish neighbors for centuries
But that all changed toward the end of the 19th Century. There were several waves of slaughter of Armenians in the 1890s and in 1905. At the outbreak of WWI, when Turkey and Germany became allies, the Turks decided to eliminate the Armenians from the country. Thus, the first genocide of the twentieth Century -one that served as the template for Hitler’s Final Solution. In fact, Hitler referenced the Armenians when he planned the Holocaust. The killing began on April 24th, 1915. It started with the arrest and execution of several hundred Armenian intellectuals and it followed with the Armenian population sent out of their homes on death marches.
When I went to college at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts -thousands of miles away from Armenia., I decided to learn about aksor. All through my childhood the word was present. So, like any good college student I went to the library and was shocked at what I read. I read. Aksor meant deportation.
But it was only code for what had happened. There were death marches, rapes, murders, starvation. I was stunned; I couldn’t believe my family- all good, decent people- could have endured all of this suffering. And then I thought perhaps it had not actually happened that way After all, my maternal grandmother, Ovsana was alive and her sister and her husband and their two children were still alive. I did not even know yet that there was a third sister who survived with her husband and their daughters.
It was at my nephew John’s 16th birthday party in 1974 that I approached my mother. My sister, Roxie, and her two sons (John and Socco) lived in the lovely sprawling town of Southbury, Connecticut.
The birthday party was a large, fun-filled one, with John’s teenage friends mixed with adult family, including my parents. They frequently took the forty five minute drive from Bridgeport to visit their oldest daughter and grandsons, so of course they were present for the occasion. My mother was dressed in a green and white checked wool suit which she had made herself. In her late 60s she kept up her appearance. She was born in Everek in 1905, her parents gave her the name of Siranoush Andrikian. In America, she became Sarah.
I had given John a tape recorder for his birthday. When he went off with friends, I was testing it saying one two, two, three and rewind over and over. I thought I should tape something significant. My mother was seated across from me by the large oak dining table. I thought it was time to ask her about Turkey. “Mom tell us about what happened in Turkey.” There was a pause, “I don’t like to talk about it”, she said in her accented voice. I tried again, “it is important, our family history”. Perhaps because she was in a good mood at her grandson’s party, perhaps I struck the right tone, she said” yes”. I said that I could help out by asking questions. After all, I was a clinical social worker and had experience in documenting family histories. With some encouragement from me she started with her description of Everek, the village in Turkey where the family lived.
Busy with my life in New York City, I put the tape aside when I got home. Then my my mother died suddenly of an aneurysm four year after the taping. The tape became more valuable to me. It had my mother’s voice and her story of survival. About 14 years after her death, I spent a summer in the Adirondacks and started the translation. I could not decide whether to use her exact words or to summarize them. Then after deciding to use her words and mine., it took another 10 years for me complete the transcription.
When I finally distributed the document to my extended family, they were saddened by the story but were happy to learn of the history. There was following it.; it was choppy and the Armenian names were unfamiliar: Derouhie, Khgetz, Gulkhateer. Who were these people (see family tree above)?
In Southbury in 1974, my mother spoke to me for over an hour in both Armenian and English. At times, she was annoyed at my questions. I asked her how she knew the war was over’ “I was a child; how could I know that?” When she was remembering the “Road of Blood and the Baby”, her reaction was palpable. I cringed for her pain.
I know that genocidal trauma can be inter-generational. It worsens when the oppressor denies what happened. In my case part of me says, “Forget about it; get on with your life and deal with happy things.” But another voice says “it is your obligation to your mother and your family to go on record with this story.” This time I am trying to appease both voices It has taken another 10 years to return to my mother’s story. I have decided to write it in summary form, then give it to my extended family, various genocide libraries and a website that will post it.
Siranoush’s Story
My father was a successful businessman and one of the most prosperous people in Everek. He had three hundred women working for him. They sorted stones. Some were very valuable and were sent all over the world, even the United Stated. (It was hard to understand the tape. It might have been black and white stones, perhaps mastic?) He also exported wool which came from the villages and was sent to Mersin from where it was shipped. He had a partnership. He was the manager of the business and would frequently travel to and from Mersin. There were four cousins in the business. Two were from the Ohanian family. Once every four years, one of them would live in Mersin. He also owned land. He would allow farmers to work the fields and split the produce with the farmer.
During one of the pogroms of Turks against Armenians. A neighbor’s son killed my maternal great grandmother . He asked for some grapes. She bent down to give him some and he split her throat. Her daughter, my grandmother, said “oh mama”. The neighbor’s son threatened to kill her and she ran away. Her father took her to Kayseri, a major city neat Everek.
Because the families liked and respected each other, my parents Ovsana (nee Gerkemazian) and Sarkis Andrikian were engaged when my mother was 13 years old. Ovsana did not have any knowledge of this arrangement. One-day Sarkis visited her house. When people asked who was there she said “some boy”. There was laughter since she had no idea that she was engaged. At one point my mother was ill. When she recovered the Andrikian family pressed for an immediate marriage. At another time she went to Kayseri to stay with relatives. Two of Sarkis’s uncles went to Kayseri to confirm the engagement and to seek an immediate wedding.
My grandfather was adamant that she would not marry until she was 16 years old and suggested that if the Andrikian family wanted an immediate wedding they should find another girl. When they did marry, my father was 23 years old. They lived with his family.
My mother was unable to get pregnant and was the subject of gossip. When she was 20 years old, she had Victoria. There was a large celebration. After that she had children regularly. I was born, Antranig and Araxie. Jack was born after the deportations.
The Andrikian family was quite wealthy. When there was a famine in 1895, my grandparents went to the village and gave food to the needy.
Our house was on a hill and spanned two sides of a street which was connected by a bridge. Because of the hill, the house was four stories. There was a storage cellar and basement. We lived on the top floor in a huge apartment. My mother lived like a queen. There was a nanny and a maid. In addition, a woman came in every week to fix my mother’s hair. It was put in long thin braids. Despite her comforts, she could not sit still. She would be directing people, sewing and crocheting. She worked like a jackass.
My father’s mother was a simple, religious woman. She did not know that her son had gone on a dangerous trip in the winter. She found out of the trip when a neighbor asked her if she was going to pray for her son. She had a nervous breakdown and was sick for two years; my mother cared for her. My grandmother also predicted her death. She said when we would return from church she would be dead.
1915
When the aksor began, my father Sarkis, was taken from home. The police came and my mother pleaded with them saying he was too ill for prison. She tried to get him released by visiting influential people who might help him. She took food to the jail
The farmers who worked his land liked him for he was fair and took care of them. They suggested that Ovsana, my mother, pretend she was a Turk and offered to care her and her children and to send food to Sarkis in jail. These same people were questioned by the Turkish authorities who subject them to beatings. They were to testify that Sarkis had brought arms from Mersin. Because they respected him and his kindness, they refused to lie about him.
The Turks searched Armenian homes for arms and ammunition. If they were found, you were killed. My father had ammunition in the house. My mother put the ammunition under her clothes, put on a coat and buried the ammunition. People were surprised that she would dare to do this.
My father and his business partners were sent to the jail in Kayseri where they were to be hung. They were stunned when a business acquaintance who had been a friend came to the jail and said, “You are going to die, rot in this jail, I curse you.” He returned in a few days and said, “As a friend I cannot protect you but as an enemy, I can help you. I can save your lives by keeping you in prison. If you leave, you will be killed.”
My father became old and sick in the three years he spent in jail. Each night three or four men came in and took someone to hang. My father said his heart would race when the door opened. At the end of the imprisonment things improved and he was let out of jail every day and returned at night because of the businessman who had helped him with this as well as the status of his cousin. My uncle, Sumpat Andrikian’s, father served, as secretary of the jail for he wrote well in Turkish and Armenian. This freedom made things a little better for them.
The Deportation
The three Gerkemazian sisters (Ovsana, Derouhie, and Gulkhateer), their 9 children and Gulkhateer’s husband left together. He was with us because he was not always in Everek and escaped. When necessary, he would wear woman’s clothes. He also hid a great deal.
Ovsana had four children Siranoush, Victoria, Antanig and Araxie. Derouhie had three children Khegtz, Arsen and Miriam. Gulkhateer had her husband and two daughters.
My mother, Ovsana, was very brave. That was her character, while her sister Derouhie was sweet and kind.
My mother realized what was going to happen and prepared. She was the one of the richest Armenian woman in Everek. She sold things from our house and she had red gold. She took the gold and sewed it in bundles and placed them in our hems and in our belts. She covered the gold and made it into buttons.
We left with a donkey. As children we did not understand what was happening and thought we would see new places; we were excited. I was about nine years old. We went to Adana. We walked during the day and stopped at night. We were with the group from Everek. If you could not walk you were killed. Because we had a donkey, I could ride on it some of the time. Some people had carts. Others could only walk.
Guards surrounded us. The weather was hot; there was no water. If you saw water and went to get it, you were killed. We were allowed to drink the water we had with us and the food we brought. If you ran out, you could die. People who died were left on the side of the road.
In Adana there were rich, influential Armenians. They gathered 20 families together and hired Charkes to protect them. The Charkes were private guards and feared no one. My uncle knew these people and arranged that we join them at night with the help of our own Charkes. So we rushed to catch up with these families.
In Adana, we left our animal and rented two carts. We learned that the group from Adana had left the day before. We would have to travel day and night to catch up to them. Our guards told us to leave. They were riding horses and would join us shortly. We were to go on a road so dangerous that it was called the Road of Blood. The Charkes never showed up.
Something happened which still frightens me when I think of it. It was a beautiful moonlit night. All of a sudden three or four men came toward us with swords. They told us to come off the carts. We jumped off. My uncle jumped into the bushes and they did not see him. He would have been killed immediately. There were so may children, it added to the confusion.
My mother was very brave. She stood on the cart and said, “Come on gentlemen, take whatever you want” and threw things on the ground, “Take whatever you want, it all belongs to you”. She had money hanging down her back. I don’t know how she did it but she removed it from her back and threw it into the hay on the cart.
They came and took everything they wanted. They searched each of us. They took money from the aunts and everyone who had gold on them. They took it, disappeared and did not kill us. My uncle who was hiding got back on the cart with the rest of us. We met the people from Adana the next day. The Charkes also joined us. They had been delayed because one of their friends had been accidently killed by a bullet and they could not leave Adana. After they joined us, we were safe.
I will never forget that road. Men sat down because they were tired and they died. Someone thought a small baby was dead and placed it on a rock. I will always remember that baby. She wasn’t dead and people tried to save her, but she died. My sister Araxie had a fever. We did not have water. She died. Later in life when my mother turned on the faucet, she would say “my poor child; you died because we did not have water.” She was herself ill and asked her sister Derouhie to bury the baby because she did not want the dogs to eat it. Derouhie who was not well could not do this. In fact, she lost her baby daughter, Miriam. My brother Antranig was saved by an old man who gave him water. The man said,” I know I am going to die, let him live”.
Syria
We went to a refugee camp in Syria. From there we were to be sent to Deir ez- Zor. People who had run away from there, advised us not to go because we would die. I do not know how we did it but we escaped and went to Aleppo. We went to the Baron, the best hotel. My mother gave red gold to an official and his friends so we could stay there. She was constantly bribing people. We were there a month, when the police told us we did not belong and they had to deport us.
We did not know what to do. An influential person related to royalty offered his farm to an Armenian. The Armenian was told to get together six or seven families and state you are one family and want to farm to help the Turkish government. Our three families and another family from Everek pretended that we were one family. More families were added. We pretended we were seven families but all together we were really 21 families. We went to this farm in the desert. There was nothing there. We had brought our tent from Everek which my father had made for his business travels. At night we would tie our belongings to the center post of the tent. If someone grabbed our belongings, the tent would fall down. The local Arabs came from nearby villages and took things. They even took a baby. There was no law, who was to protect us?
Finally, three people went to the man who had given us the land and told him of the danger, “they take everything from us, even our children”. Soldiers were sent and a manager to help us.
Every family put together a hut. If the manager saw an Arab around our huts, he was taken away and half of his moustache was shaved and the person was considered guilty of a crime. After that, they left us alone
Once we learned that Arabs were coming to kill us. Mother called us and took our clothes. We put on rags and covered ourselves with mud. We buried our belongings in the ground and went to the Man’s estate. He asked Arabs who lived nearby to fight the other Arabs. We were safe. At this point we were 40 families. People who escaped from the Turks would join us. We had no food, clothing or wood. We bought wheat from the villagers and would grind it and make bread. We would look for anything to make fires. One day we had nothing to burn.
We knew there were a tribe of Nomads nearby. They would stay in an area for two or three weeks until their camels had eaten the local grass. There would be dung from their camels to burn. My mother rented a donkey and my cousin Arsen and I went with my mother. It was quite a distance from our hut. My mother left us to take back a load of dung. Arsen and I were to collect more and she would return and take us back. When she left, there were other Armenians around. After a while, Arsen and I looked around and there was no one there. We were alone in the desert. There was no road. We saw an Arab approaching on a horse and we ran. My mother returned and asked about what we had picked up. We told her we had made piles but did not know where they were. She got angry. Poor woman, she came all the way back by herself. She put us on the donkey and we went back to our area. We stopped along the way to pick up any hay or dung we saw. I will never forget that day, the desert, nobody, sand everywhere.
Arsen, my cousin, and I did these chores together. I was the ‘boy’ for my mother. I may have been 10 or 11 years old. Victoria and Khegtz were older and stayed with Derouhie. Antranig was too small to go out.
Every year my mother, Ovsana, bought a supply of wheat and buried it in the ground. Every week we would remove some to eat. One year my mother was afraid her money would run out so she said we would have less bread so we could save wheat to plant. My mother hired two Arabs to help with the wheat. Arsen and I would go with the Arabs to the field each day to prevent the birds from eating the wheat. We would say “hoo, hoo” to keep the birds away.
Our neighbors wondered why I was going. I was a young girl. Something could happen to me. I didn’t understand what they were implying. If my mother sent me, I had to go. We would take a little bit of bread, a little cheese and water. There were many snakes around and one day a snake got into our water jar. We were scared. We did not want to drink water from the jar. The adults came and threw the snake from the water. My mother did not want to use this jar because of the snake. She sold it to a neighbor. Ironically, one day when Arsen and I were in the field, we forgot our water. We were very thirsty and our neighbor was there with the water jar. We were so thirsty we used it.
It was so hot that if you put an egg out in the sun. It would cook. Imagine the times you go to the beach and the sun is so hot you can’t put your feet in the sand.
Although this was desert, there was rain. We had vegetables. We had plenty of wheat. We did not have fruit. We did not have meat but had yogurt. The yogurt had black bugs on it and in it. If they bit you, you would have a red mark. We would take off the bugs on the top and pretend we did not see the others. When you are hungry, you eat everything. When the armistice came, my mother sold the wheat.
Water would be brought to us to drink and later they dug and found a stream by our hut. Arsen, Khegetz, Victoria and would I sit by the stream and play in the mud. We made houses and dolls. For the first few years we had food to eat. It was good to play. We felt free.
Initially, we all lived in one tent. Around the first year Gulkhateer and her family moved to work for the manager. My aunt’s daughters were good seamstresses. They made clothes for the manager’s wife who lived in the City. It was also dangerous for my uncle. People realized that there was a man in our house and came to find him. We had a hut next door and my mother placed him there behind some bedding. They came and didn’t see a man so they took a stick and put it into the bedding. My mother was afraid the bedding would fall and grabbed the stick and said “come on baron, look effendi”. She lifts up the mattress but is protecting it so it will not fall. After that my uncle, aunt and daughters went with the manager. My cousin, Khegetz, and I were like sisters. We were like one family.
My mother was brave and strict. She didn’t know how to be gentle and sympathetic with children. Once when we lived in Cyprus, I had to rip out the sleeve of a blouse I was making seven times until she approved. We would have to get up early and work seven days a week, do embroidery or crochet. Once we had a visitor who said her daughter in law slept till eight o’clock. I thought what a luxury, how wonderful.
One day everyone was down the hill doing the wash. Arsen and I were at our hut. There was one cup from which we all drank water. Arsen and I took the cup added water and flour and were going to make bishy, fried dough. We made the dough. One of us was watching to see if anyone was coming. Khegetz was coming and we hid the cup. Since she wanted to drink water, we told her what we were doing and told her that she could share with us. Before we could start, Derouhie came looking for the cup. We showed her the dough and she said to “hurry” Before the dough was cooked, my mother came and she was angry. Derouhie would cover for us or pretend she did not notice what we were doing. Once we took 5 chick peas to eat and got punished. There wasn’t any food.
One day in the desert someone stole our clothes. My mother noticed that a woman from another village had taken our underpants and made them into a blouse. My mother confronted the woman who told her a man had given them to her. She and my uncle went to this woman’s house to see if they could find more things. They went to a village where the Arabs had gathered. They see a woman sitting on top of the clothes. My mother and uncle are trying to pull her off the bundle. When they saw the Arabs had weapons of long thick boards that could kill you with one blow, they decided to leave. They returned to our area and tried to find people who would return with them. No one would go. My mother did not know how to be afraid. She was in charge of everything. She was a strong, good woman. My father was not as brave. Ovsana’s mother was very good but my mother took after her grandmother who had been killed by the Turkish neighbor.
During the war my parents communicated by mail. My father would send money or one or two cups of sugar. My uncle in the city would receive these packages and take what he wanted. They always had plenty. Sometimes they would send us things to share as if they were doing us a big favor. Sometimes they would put it on a scale and divide it in half. It was all from my father’s money. They were constantly writing to my father asking for money. It was hard for him to get money and he suffered trying to help his wife and children. My mother was suspicious of her sister. After the war we found out what they did. However, my mother was not angry she said that their contacts had helped save her family. Victoria and I got so angry. We used to hate them. They always dressed the best, ate the best and treated us poorly. They would order us around. It was my mother’s money. They did not have money and neither did Derouhie. Pop, her husband, lived in the United States. He was from an important family but Pop’s brother had gone to Constantinople and gambled away the family fortune. Pop went to America to earn money. Derouhie and her children Arsen and Kghetz went to France and later to New York to join Pop.
When the war ended, we went to Aleppo. I remember learning that my father had come and I jumped up and down, up and down. I’ll never forget it. We stayed in Aleppo for three to four months and my father earned money. He would buy quantities of fabric from big shops and sell it on the sidewalk. He suffered. He worked so hard and saw so little of life. When he was released from prison, he went back to Everek. Our house had been looted but when people saw him, they returned much of what was taken. They had such high regard for him. My mother did not want to go to Everek. “All my neighbors and family were killed; how can I live there? We have a business in Mersin, why do we not go there? It is by the sea. If there is trouble again, we can quickly leave.”
Mersin
When we went to Mersin, my father started a business with his Andrikian cousin. They started a wholesale company where they would bring food from Cyprus and dry goods from Constantinople and Aleppo. We stayed there for a few years and my father was getting rich again. They also had a business in gold. It could not legally be taken out of the country. One day they put gold in the bottom of a food barrel. As the food barrel was taken from the ship to the small boat that was taking it to shore, the barrel broke. Gold fell onto the boat and into the sea. A rumor started that the entire barrel was filled with gold and the Andrikians were very rich.
I had happy days in Mersin. I went to school. I was the smallest in the class and everyone liked me. The heads of the church would come to examine the students and I was very smart. When they saw my father, they would say,” Sarkis effendi, do you know this little girl is very good in school. You should be proud of her.” I remember this period as the happiest in my life.
When a train came from Adana to Mersin, it was reported that the Turks were killing Armenians in Adana. My father sent my mother, Antranig and Jack who was a baby to Cyprus. What was my father to do with the goods in his warehouse? His neighbors said, “do not go Sarkis effendi, we will protect you”. My father stayed. He said that he was not going to move again. “If they want to kill me, I will let them.” My uncle’s family had already moved to Cyprus. My aunt had been left for dead during the war but survived.. She never recovered emotionally. Victoria and I were then sent to Cyprus. My father made belts for us filled with gold and silver. He felt we would not be bothered because we were children. The ship was quarantined when we arrived in Cyprus. We were searched. I took off my belt and sat on it when I was searched. However, we were to stay there for seven days. We were laying on the ground. Victoria and I could not defend ourselves. Our uncle would visit us and we could speak through a small hole. I managed to get through that hole and gave him the belts. Victoria watched to see if anyone was coming. She also pulled me back through that hole. We thanked God.
One day after hearing more bad reports from the interior, my father decided to visit us in Cyprus for a few days. He locked his stores and said that he would soon be back. It was an overnight trip to Cyprus. A baby on the ship died and the ship was in quarantine outside of Cyprus for 40 days. During that time, the French had returned Mersin to Turkey. He never returned to Mersin.
Cyprus
My father had to start in Cyprus all over again. I think this was in 1922. My parents suffered. We had very little with us, no furniture. Jack who had been born in Mersin was sick. After a time, my father had the best store in the market. He died in 1933.
My Father’s Story
Like my mother, my father — John, never spoke about the genocide or his family, even though he lost his entire family, 40 people, perished in the massacres. Whenever he met people from the region, my father would ask about his mother. He heard that she might have been ill. His best hope, in the face of tragedy, was that she had died of illness rather than at the hands of the Turks. Only when Siranoush died in 1977, did he bring out the box of letters he had received from his mother, encompassing several years.
My father and I sat at the kitchen table where he read her letters in Armenian, tears rolling down our cheeks. These were the letters of a loving, kind mother who adored her son. “My dear son, I think of you every day and pray for your success. I hope you are taking care of yourself and are eating healthy food and have good company.” He said to me more than once, “Arlene, when I die, I want the letters buried with me.” But in a horrible twist of fate, once when he was away, kids broke into the house and stole the box of letters. My father was a man who kept his feelings to himself. We never spoke about the letters again.
I learned about his life in in bits and pieces, in various conversations over the years. I wish I had thought to ask for more information at the time; somehow it did not seem so urgent then. I knew, for instance, my father was an only child and that his own father, Yeghia, left Fenesse to go to America to earn money and did not return until my father was an adolescent. But I did not learn much more about his early life.
My father grew up to be a kind, decent, responsible man., smart yet uncomplicated. He came to America with an uncle who wanted to avoid the Turkish army, arriving in New York on May 11,1913, on the SS Martha Washington. His records indicated that he was 18 years old, though I remember him saying that he was sixteen. He used the name John instead of Hovanes, his Armenian name, on all of his documents. Like his own father John went to Bridgeport, Connecticut to live and work. He found a room at Seaview Avenue and worked at a factory manufacturing vinyl records.
In his early years in America he went to events in the Armenian community, particularly to activities centered around immigrants from Everek and Fenesse, neighboring communities in Turkey. It was at one of these events that he met Victoria, my mother’s older sister who came to New York in 1928 to study piano and married Joseph Ayvazian. It was Victoria who chose my father for her sister. My father knew of my mother’s family and did not think he had the right stuff to marry into this prominent family. But he eventually changed his mind and went to Cyprus in 1933 to meet his prospective bride and the rest of the family. Unfortunately, my mother’s father, Sarkis Andrikian, died while John was en route. Still Siranoush and John were married on June 11, 1933, and sailed to America in October on the SS Conte de Savoia.
The Demirjian’s of Bridgeport
When they arrived in Bridgeport, they lived in a furnished room My father returned to his job in the record manufacturing company, but this was during the Depression. He was doing piece work that might earn him 75 cents a day, not enough to support a wife. Siranoush who came from a family of business people encouraged him to buy a grocery store. They borrowed $500 from her sister and her husband, Victoria and Joseph, and purchased the Remington Market at 177 Remington Street. They then moved from their furnished room to rooms behind the store.
At some point, my mother worked in a shirt factory where there was an Armenian supervisor and she would also help in the store. She spoke and wrote in Armenian, Turkish, French and Greek but not English. She would later laugh at herself when she called every customer “sir” until John corrected her.
Three years after they married, my parents had their first daughter, whom they named Araxie, after my mother’s sister who had died in the genocide. For most of my life she has used Roxie. I was born five years later. My parents by that time had been Americanized and gave me the name Arlene.
The business prospered and shortly after Roxie’s birth, the family moved to an apartment over the store. It had several rooms including two bedrooms and a dining room. Life was becoming more comfortable. It became more so in 1950 when we moved to a house in a more affluent section of town, McKinley Avenue. This house was even more spacious with luxurious extras like a sun room, a library and an outdoor porch as well as a yard with a trellis fence with rose bushes.
The immigrant dream was being realized. For Armenians who were persecuted because of their religion, a church was essential. Thus, the Armenians in the Bridgeport community came together to purchase a church. This Armenian Orthodox church became the center of the community’s social life as well as the religious one. There were parties, fundraisers, New Year’s celebrations, Armenian language classes, choir rehearsal. I was told as a child to call all the adults in the church “aunt” or “uncle”. It was very confusing until I learned whom I was actually related to.
My parents hung on to their Armenian traditions but also, each in his or her own way, adapted to life in America as an American. They both wrote and spoke in Armenian and they also learned to write and speak in English. I remember my mother taking classes to improve her grammar. My father worked a very long day, starting at seven in the morning and not stopping until nine at night; he worked half day on Sunday. Later in life, he said that these were the best days of his life. After all, he was a prominent, respected member of the community, and I believe the neighbors and customers felt like a second family to him. He was known as,” honest John,” keeping a book with everyone’s purchases. Come pay day, he would quickly add up the sums and was reimbursed. My father was a man of integrity. He always did the right thing and was always kind. Roxie’s son was named for him. Both he and my mother adored their grand -children and were patient and loving to both John and Socco.
My mother was, in her own way, an early feminist and surprisingly forward-thinking woman for someone from an extremely traditional background. For instance, I remember her studying nutrition and going to the health food store when it still seemed like an exotic place. She was interested in the stock market and started investing for the family. She wanted her daughters to have careers and independence, so she started saving funds for college for my sister and me when we entered elementary school. She was creative: a wonderful cook, seamstress, and painter. She took up oil painting in her later years and was a respectable artist. She had a sense of adventure and curiosity so was interested in learning. My sister has advanced degrees in education and I have a doctorate in Social Work. We supported our mother’s belief in education.
Today, I look upon my parents with awe and admiration. They survived and thrived.
END OF ARLENE’S WRITING
The Kalfayan’s
So this was just the story from one of the sides of my Armenian family. The other side, my grandfather(Sarkis) — married to Aroxie and my dad’s father, is not accounted for in this much detail. However, it would be an injustice to my story not to mention him and what I do know.
Sarkis was married to Aroxie and lived in Connecticut where they had two sons, my father (John) and his brother (Socco).
To my knowledge, Sarkis was born 1936 in Beirut, Lebanon to an Armenian family and in the mid-1950s (I think?) drove his way from Lebanon, across Europe where he spent some time in Paris, to a port city (I don’t know which one) where he sold his car and used it to purchase a ticket the America.
As a child, I would always get excited to visit grandpa in his condo in Tarpon Springs, FL — a suburb of Tampa. To me Tarpon appeared to be the “hotspot” where all the people from “the old country” retired. We spent many visits eating at the local Greek or Armenian restaurants where he appeared to know everyone.
He was a shorter bald man, maybe a few inches over 5 ft. tall. Though he was not born in America he spoke English well with a slight accent. While he was old, he was always full of energy. I never once, saw the man sit or be lazy. He was always doing something. Even at such a young age, he was always impressive to me — he spoke 4 languages (Armenian, Lebanese, French, and English), he loved cars ( I still have the car he gave me on my 16th birthday), he never knew a stranger, and even though he was well past retirement age he worked at the local Publix demoing and sampling foods for as long as I can remember.
Another example of his “always on the go” demeanor was when we would come to visit us. I vividly remember the arguments he and my father would get in about fixing something. He would always find a light bulb or door handle or something that needed to be fixed and he would immediately go about fixing it.
I believe he was a mechanic in his younger years and thus he always loved cars. This would also explain his constant yearning to be fixing something. Sarkis is no longer with us, he suffered multiple strokes in his later years but this story would not be complete without mentioning what a vibrant and tenacious man he was.
