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BASS LAKE, California – As I sit here, near Yosemite National Park, with 38 other Tarkanians on our annual retreat, I take a lot of pride in family and can’t help thinking about my family’s roots.
By the lake, we’ll eat a variety of grape leaves, some stuffed with rice and meat, which also will make me think about Armenia.
My mother, Haighouhie “Rose,” was born there. Her father and brother were decapitated by the Turkish military, just for being Armenian, during the genocide there between 1915 and 1922.
Her mother sent her and her brother out of the country on horseback, and Rose eventually met George, her husband and my father, in Lebanon. They married and immigrated to Euclid, Ohio, outside Cleveland.
I went to Armenia for the only time in my life four years ago, with a priest from Fresno who took more than two dozen of us. Some of my family went along on the trip.
We went for about 16 days. We had tour guides and buses, and we stayed in a nice Marriott in Yerevan, the capital.
We went to the Armenian Holocaust Museum and saw where my mother was raised. It was very emotional going through that museum. In the genocide, 1.5 million were killed by the Ottoman government in Turkey.
My wife’s parents were killed in the holocaust. There was so much poverty there, in the towns. So many buildings weren’t even completed. It was frightening.
We went to one city that had been hit by an earthquake. Boy, that was really brutal. We went to a lot of school functions. Everyone donated something to them. They didn’t have anything.
It was tough.
They’ve wanted me to go back. They wanted to dedicate an outdoor basketball court to me. That was nice, but I haven’t been able to get away. It’s such a long trip. My legs bother me on airplanes.
Some television and radio stations, and newspaper people, did interviews with me or wrote stories on me.
At the Marriott, a few tourists recognized me. At other places, some people said “Jerry” and “UNLV,” but there were very few.
I was in a health club at the Marriott and a 35-year-old guy, who was with the FBI working in the country of Georgia, next to Armenia, came up to talk to me.
I said, “What are you doing in Europe?” He said he was headquartered in Georgia but his district was Armenia. He said there was a lot of bad crime in Armenia.
“But it’s not real bad here,” the guy told me. “Most of the bad criminals have moved to California.”
I said, where?
“Glendale,” he said. “I’m in constant contact with the FBI in Glendale.”
That FBI agent played football at North Carolina State.
But that was the trip of a lifetime and I could not believe how those people had to live. It was incredible.
A great many of those people were living in nothing more than big shipment boxes. They had so little on the shelves in stores. They’ve had so many years without electricity.
Can you imagine that?
I loved all of the Armenian food. I could eat that every day. I was raised on it. The lamb was great. Fantastic. Every time I’m in Fresno, I eat Armenian food half the time.
Here at the lake, it’s most of the time. This is also where, and when, I am so thankful for my family and everyone else in my life. And I will never forget that trip to Armenia.
Comment removed by staff.
What, do you comb stories looking for any mention of the FBI, msfreeh?
So all the worst criminals in Armenia have moved to Glendale? Was that agent serious, how would they even get in the country with criminal records and if the FBI is aware of them, why haven't they been deported?
I am ethnic Armenian from my maternal grandmother (nee Khederian) and her side of the family and as such I found this article very interesting. My great-great grandparents were in the Ottoman Empire during the Genocide and my great-great grandfather was an Armenian freedom fighter during the Genocide.
Around 2001, my grandmother, grandfather, cousin and I returned to my family's roots in Watertown, Massachusetts (Armenian capital of the Eastern United States) for a family reunion. I met many of my Armenian family and we traced our family line back to Greater Armenia. It was one of the greatest moments of my childhood and I believe that every Armenian-American should make the journey to the motherland as a pilgrimage like Jerry and his kin had done.
Jerry is an inspiration to the Armenian-American community and it's great that our native brothers of Armenia have been able to hear of one of (if not the) most recognized Armenian-Americans in America. It is Armenians like Jerry that keep our heads up when morons like Kim Kadashian make us look horrible.
Also, if you haven't been to one, you should try and make it to the Armenian Library and Museum of America in Watertown as it taught me very much and opened my eyes more to the Armenian Genocide and the flat out refusal of the Turkish government to recognize the horrible act. It is as if the German government refused to recognize the Holocaust.
Very few American Armenians realize that Vladmir Putin, the ruler of Russia, and his flunky Russian President Medvedev, have announce a plan to form an "alliance" with several of the poorer former Soviet republics, including Belarus, Armenia and Azerbajian. Apparently the governments of the small countries like Armenia are willing to go along.
There is no telling what this alliance will really mean, in terms of the daily lives of the Armenians in Armenia. However, my sense is that the "alliance" will not be a good thing, and will, perhaps simply reestablish parts of Russia's empire.
However, I do remember that when Armenia was tightly controlled by Moscow, Armenian people were not free to leave the USSR, and their relatives living in America and Canada were not free to visit them.
This re-Russification of Armenia is probably not a good thing, and American Armenians should be paying attention to it.
Could American Armenians do more to lift the country of Armenia out of poverty, to keep it out of Russian dominance?
Yes, the Russian war machine is replenishing at an astounding rate. This move is no doubt tied into it's future plans to attack the west.
More stupidity from whats in the box. He must be getting his talking points from Dick Cheney but then again he is an expert on everything. I am surprised the Greenspun family has not fired all of their editors and journalists and hired the nit wit whats in the box to decide what stories are news worthy and what stories are not. But then again he has sput himself in the running for a state department job. Janitor.
That mighty Russian war machine could not handle the lowly Afghanistan rebels.But how could anyone expect the nit wit whats in the box to know facts that far back in history? That is astounding.