ARMENIAN BOOKS ON DISPLAY AT PINGREE SCHOOL
January 11, 2013
By Will Broaddus
Staff writer
To highlight its new exchange program with a school in Armenia,
Pingree School in Hamilton is hosting a number of exhibits, including
a collection of books on Armenian subjects.
The collection belongs to Beverly resident John Soursourian, whose
wife, Judith Klein, is director of communications and marketing
at Pingree.
Soursourian, whose father came to America from the town of Kharpert
at the age of 8, has loaned works in English by contemporary
Armenian-American novelists Peter Balakian and Carol Edgarian.
There is also a copy of the memoirs of Henry Morgenthau, American
ambassador to Turkey from 1913 to 1916, describing the genocidal
holocaust in which 1.5 million Armenians were murdered by Turks.
These events are treated in another book in the collection, a textbook
published by the nonprofit organization Facing History and Ourselves,
which helps students address the topic of genocide.
There are titles in Armenian, a language with a unique script that
uses a 36-letter alphabet that was codified in 404 A.D. by St. Mesrob.
There are also books documenting Armenians~R experience as immigrants,
including ~SThe Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem~T and ~SThe Armenian
People of Portland, Maine,~T a collection of photographs.
~SOur Boys,~T which collects photographs of Armenian veterans
who served in World War II, was published by the Armenian General
Benevolent Union of America.
~SIt shows the pride,~T Klein said. ~SWe~Rre Americans first.~T
The display also includes ~SThe Whole Armenian Catalog,~T published
in 1974 by the Armenian Student Association of America, which parodies
~SThe Whole Earth Catalog,~T a popular resource for the counterculture.
Photographs of life in Armenia before 1915, which come from Project
SAVE Armenian Photographic Archives in Watertown, are also on display
in the library. Visitors are asked to check in with the school~Rs
main office, Klein said.