The Australian Magazine
July 14, 2007 Saturday
Double take
by Richard Guilliatt
Stepan Kerkyasharian, 63, president of NSW’s Anti-Discrimination
Board, and his son Emmanuel, 28, an Aboriginal Legal Service
solicitor, talk to Richard Guilliatt.
STEPAN: When he was eight, Emmanuel came with me one Saturday to
visit his mother in hospital – she’d had an operation and we were
expecting her to come home the next day. During that visit she had a
pulmonary embolism, and she died in front of us. It was medical
negligence – all she needed was an injection of anti-coagulant and
she would have lived. Emmanuel witnessed that with me, and I think
that was part of the bond that formed between us.
For about 10 years after that, I was there for him all the time. In
fact, the main reason I switched jobs, from SBS Radio to the NSW
Ethnic Affairs Commission, was so I could cut my interstate travel. I
used to do a lot of cooking and washing and ironing because I thought
it was important that the environment he was accustomed to was not
changed too severely. I wanted him to know that he belonged to a
family, that there was support for him at least until he reached
adulthood. I didn’t even contemplate re-marrying until after he
graduated from high school.
I’m sure his mother’s death affected his outlook on life; I think he
would probably still find it difficult to talk about his deep,
innermost feelings about it. It must have left a scar in his mind,
but I think it also may have instilled in him a resolve to assist
people in need.
I’ve never met anyone as fair-minded as Emmanuel. He graduated in law
from Sydney University and most young people with his level of
academic achievement would have gone into commercial law, because
there are big dollars there. But Emmanuel chose another path, because
he really thinks that as a lawyer he’s got a role to play in justice.
Here is this young man who came out of private school on Sydney’s
North Shore and then university, with virtually no job experience,
and he decides his starting point in life will be working in Broken
Hill, helping indigenous people cope with the legal system. I just
admire him for that It isn’t something I would have dreamt of guiding
him toward.
I don’t think he had any experience of Aboriginal people before he
went there, so it was a real eye-opener for him. There are all these
deep-rooted issues of geographical isolation, cultural isolation.
After the first few weeks he rang me and said, "God, this is very
difficult." But I don’t think he ever thought of giving up. And he
was accepted quite readily because he’s a very gregarious,
down-to-earth person.
We talk virtually every day on the telephone. Now that he’s in Dubbo,
NSW, he comes down to Sydney most weekends and he’ll call me on the
way down to organise dinner with his sister and brother.
He’s always making sure I keep in touch with them. He’s someone who
is very attached to his family.
EMMANUEL: Dad comes from a background of pretty much abject poverty
in Cyprus; his father was a refugee from the Armenian genocide and
that was something I was always aware of. Not that Dad made a big
deal of it, but when I was younger there was always an emphasis on
knowing my heritage. I went to an Armenian school on Saturdays, to
learn the history and language. My grandfather lived with us, and as
I got older I heard more of the stories and realised the difficulty
Dad must have gone through to drag himself out of that.
At 18 he moved to London, then brought his father across from Cyprus,
and in 1967 he came to Australia and did the same thing.
My recollections start when he was head of SBS Radio; certainly by
the time I was eight and my mother died, he’d been working there for
a few years.
When my mother died it was a difficult time for all of us – my
brother was 18 and my sister was 15 – but I can also remember Dad
talking us through it. I think I went into shock, and it took me a
decade to really process it. But what’s always struck me is that
despite the trauma and grief, I never felt a sense of upheaval at
home; it was almost as if the next day life went on and Dad just
looked after us.
It’s only now that I realise how tough that must have been for him.
He was working tremendously long hours – at SBS Radio he travelled to
Melbourne twice a week – and all the time he was looking after his
kids. He would always take me to school every morning and there would
always be food on the table at night, whether he was there or not. He
went to school events when they were on and he always made time to
talk to us at the end of the day. He would come home from a gruelling
day at work, wouldn’t show a thing of it, and play handball with me
out the front of our house. I can’t imagine that did anything for him
at the age of 45, but he went out of his way to do it.
I look back now and I think I can see the stress on his face that I
didn’t see at the time.
Particularly having lost my mother, who he loved very, very dearly.
But he never let his emotional reaction to that affect us, and to
this day I’m not sure how much it really affected him.
His job is incredibly stressful, but I think he revels in it. I can
remember the odd bomb-scare as a kid, particularly if he spoke out
about racism. There’d be phone calls waking me up at 10.30pm and a
kerfuffle in the house; I’m pretty sure the police were sometimes
called. But again, Dad would reassure me that he had it covered. I
never actually remember being frightened.
I guess his own background inspired his interest in promoting
community harmony.
I’m sure he’s brilliant enough to have gone into the private sector
and made a lot of money, but he saw the real beauty in public
service. And I think the work I do is a sign of my father’s influence.