BOOK ON HISTORY OF ARMENIAN ORPHAN RUG TO BE PRESENTED
October 1, 2013 – 09:51 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net – On October 20, the Armenian Cultural Foundation will
have a reception and presentation of Dr. Hagop Martin Deranian’s work,
President Calvin Coolidge and the Armenian Orphan Rug.
It is dedicated to the memory of the Armenian orphan rug weavers of
the Near East Relief orphanage in Ghazir, Syria (presently Lebanon).
Successor to the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief,
the Near East Relief was established in 1915 in response to urgent
pleas from Henry Morgenthau, the American Ambassador to Turkey, and
through the efforts of industrialist and philanthropist Cleveland
Dodge and the support of President Woodrow Wilson. As such Near
East Relief embarked on a herculean task of saving the lives of over
1,000,000 refugees, including over 100,000 Armenian orphans scattered
throughout the Middle East and the Caucasus in the aftermath of the
Armenian Genocide. Over $100,000,000, an astronomical figure at the
time, was raised between 1915 and 1930 and an army of 1,000 American
physicians, nurses, civil servants, and volunteers labored to save
countless lives, Asbarez reports.
The result of over three decades of research and investigation, Dr.
Deranian’s work traces the history of the rug and the Armenian orphans:
their transportation from Urfa to safety to the present day Lebanon by
the great Swiss humanitarian and physician Jakob Kunzler, known as the
“Father of the Armenian orphans.” He details its journey to the United
States, presentation to President Calvin Coolidge in the White House,
several decades in the possession of the Coolidges and its return again
to the White House in the mid-1980s, where it is stored to this day.
Born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1922, Dr. Hagop Martin Deranian
was born to genocide survivors from the town of Hussenig, Kharpert
Province, Ottoman Empire. He is named Hagop in honor of Hagop Bogigian,
his mother’s uncle, who was a pioneer rug merchant in America and
benefactor of education for Armenian young women. His mother, born
Varter Bogigian, who died in 1929, was a survivor of the genocide,
having lost six children, her first husband, and parents.
His father, Marderos, who died in 1957, arrived in America in 1900
and operated a grocery store in Worcester. His father raised him from
the age of seven.
Dr. Deranian, a graduate of Clark University and the University of
Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, served as Lieutenant (junior
grade) in the United States Navy (1951-53) and has been engaged in
the private practice of dentistry while at the same time serving on
the faculty of the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine.
His translation of his father’s memoir, Hussenig, The Origin,
History and Destruction of an Armenian Town, was published in 1996;
an earlier bilingual edition appeared in 1981. His second book,
Worcester Is America, the Story of Worcester’s Armenians, appeared
in 1995 followed by Miracle Man of the Western Front: Dr. Varaztad
H. Kazanjian, Pioneer Plastic Surgeon, which was published in 2007.
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