Words of grief, praise offered for Minnesotan killed in Armenia
By AVET DEMOURIAN
Associated Press
May 23 2004
YEREVAN, Armenia – Friends, colleagues and students shed tears and
shared words of praise at a memorial service Sunday for Joshua Haglund,
a Minnesotan who was teaching English in Armenia and was stabbed to
death in the capital Yerevan earlier this month.
About 100 people attended the ceremony in an auditorium at the
American University of Armenia. A portrait photograph of Haglund,
a 33-year-old from Shoreview, Minn., stood flanked by two burning
candles on a stand draped with black cloth, and mourners made entries
in a condolence book.
“I was fascinated with his sensibility and sense of humor. We shared
everything, good and bad,” Amelia Weir, a friend who met Haglund
on her first day in Armenia, told those assembled. “Something that
struck me – he was fully present in this life. He wanted us to be
dedicated to what we do.”
“Joshua was filled with emotion by nature, and his honesty and
decency amazed us,” said Zarui Shushanian, one of Haglund’s students
at Yerevan’s Linguistics University, where he taught under the aegis
of the U.S. State Department’s English Language Fellow program.
The U.S. deputy chief of mission in Armenia, Vivian Walker, recited
Psalm 23 from the Bible – “The Lord is my shepherd” – and an Armenian
priest, Father Ktrich Derezhian, said that Haglund had “wished people
well with all his heart, but his heart was broken.”
Haglund’s body was found in downtown Yerevan on the night of May 17,
with signs of beating and three stab wounds in his chest, Armenian
police said. An official with the Armenian Prosecutor General’s office
said on condition of anonymity that the killing had “personal motives”
and voiced hope that perpetrators could be quickly found.
Haglund had been planning to leave Armenia shortly for a trip through
Iran before returning to Minnesota for the summer. Before coming to
Armenia, a Caucasus Mountain nation that gained independence in the
1991 Soviet breakup, he had lived for extended periods in Japan,
India and Puerto Rico.

Sergei Ivanov Says Gabala Station Will Serve Only To Russia
Baku Today
21/05/2004 16:27
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Thursday denied rumors
that his government was planning to allow the United States to use
its Gabala radar station that is located in Azerbaijan.
“I don’t foresee that. Even if I had a rich imagination, I couldn’t
foresee that,” Ivanov told reporters in Yerevan, according to the
Associated Press. “This station is for the sole use of the Russian
military.”
Russia’s Interfax new agency quoted Ivanov as saying that the Gabala
radar station could only work for the interests of the space forces
of his country.
Put into operation in 1988, the Gabala radar stating was aimed to
monitor jets and missiles in the Southern Hemisphere.
The former Soviet Union had nine such radar stations, the Gabala
station and the station at Mukachevo in Ukraine being the last to
be constructed.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in late 1991, Azerbaijan allowed
Russia to continue using the station.
The Defense Minister Ivanov expressed satisfaction with the state of
military cooperation between Russia and Armenia.
Itar-Tass quoted Ivanov as saying that relations between the two
countries in the field of defense and security have been improving
dynamically and steadily and that there have been no major problems
between them.
He mentioned that 600 Armenian cadets were currently studying in
Russian higher military schools.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

The need for mobilization policy
By Eduard Harutiunian
14 May 04
Yerkir/AM
According to a common position, it is only the authorities that
are accountable before the country and the society. No doubt, the
authorities’ main role is to ensure internal and external security
of the country.
But because the authorities are formed from among the political force,
any political party has its own part of responsibility.
Political parties’ activities are completely tied with national
security issues. The parties’ responsibility is essential in internal
political developments, too.
After all, these organizations are interim links between the public
and the authorities, and they present socio-economic and political
demands of the public to the authorities. It is not natural that
political organizations, criticizing the authorities, have little
credibility. When people do not accept and trust both the authorities
and the political parties, it means that they deny any form of
political organization of the nation.
There is a dominant perception in the political life of Armenia, for
example, that unlike the government, the activities of a political
party is private and should not be a subject of state or public
control and criticism.
In a political system, the authorities have the same role as the money
in economy. Both have powerful capacities of state-building and in a
civil society, they first of all serve the national structure of the
statehood. Devaluation of the both may have devastating impact on a
country’s socio-economic, spiritual and political lives.
In a transitional society, people are disappointed first of all of
internal indefiniteness and unnecessary exploitation of national
super-issues. From this point of view, in Armenia, for example,
resolution of current problems is even harder because of the unsolved
problems left from the initial period of the transitional period.
This is why Armenia is in the zone of “military-political quakes.” Only
a social system that has reliable qualifications for internal security
can best overcome external threats. History of transitional nations
shows that on the way to open societies, the mobilization policy
should be used as an interim means.
Such policy is crucial when a society finds itself in a crisis,
and social and political tensions run high. In these conditions, the
need to mobilize all external and internal resources, emerges. The
model of state and political mobilization is a policy that enables
to reach a higher immunity of the society through the least expenses
but single-minded efforts.
This is especially true for transitional nations because their
immunity for economic crisis is low because they are not adapted for
market economy. Having no large resources, time and capacities to
establish competent economies, it is necessary to establish functional
definiteness inside the system, well-organized national life and a
determination of discreet conditions for everybody.
The internal conditions of the survival of the Armenian nation are
already crossing the threatening line. To correct the situation, it
is necessary to centralize the government, create a just distribution
system, tough control and clarification of the political field. Of
course, these are not components of a market economy. But the
mobilization policy is the only way to bring the state and national
systems out of the current difficult conditions.

7th International Junior Wrestling Tournament Starts In Izmir
Turkish Press
Saturday, May 22, 2004
Anadolu Agency: 5/22/2004
IZMIR – The Seventh International Junior Free-Style and Greco-Roman
Wrestling Tournament started in western province of Izmir on Friday.
Wrestlers from Turkey, Albania, Azerbaijan, Germany, Armenia, Bulgaria,
Georgia, Hungary, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tunisia and
Turkmenistan participated in the tournament.
The tournament will end on Sunday.
(UK-AÖ) 21.05.2004
Copyright 2004 Anadolu Agency. All rights reserved

The Daily Star, Bangladesh
May 22 2004
Talking books
Agha Shahid Ali
Yasmeen Murshed
The transience of human life is much with me these days and I find
myself recalling lost friends and lost opportunities with increasing
nostalgia. I would have loved hearing Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in person
because his CDs are a poor substitute for the drama of the real life
version, but it was not to be, and I would have greatly enjoyed
meeting the talented poet, Agha Shahid Ali (1949-2001) whose
premature death has saddened his many admirers and a poetry lovers
throughout the world. It has deprived South Asia of a blazing talent
from taking its rightful place among contemporary English poets.
Born in New Delhi, brought up in Kashmir and later to become an
American, Ali taught at a number of prestigious institutions in
America including the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His poetry
collections include The Half-Inch Himalayas (Pub: Wesleyan University
Press 1987); A Nostalgist’s Map Of America (pub: Norton 1992); The
Country Without A Post Office (pub: Norton 1997); and Rooms Are Never
Finished (pub: Norton 2001) which was a finalist for the National
Book Award in the US in 2001. He was a ghazal enthusiast and
translated Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poems in The Rebel’s Silhouette —
Selected Poems (pub: University of Massachusetts Press 1991). He
cajoled and encouraged a wide range of well known modern poets into
contributing to a poetry anthology entitled Ravishing Disunities —
Real Ghazals In English (pub: Wesleyan University Press 2000) which
he edited.
I reread The Country Without a Post Office recently and it reminded
me what a strong and vibrant poet Ali was. These poems are a poignant
and nostalgic evocation of his lost homeland particularly in the
tragic era of events when the troubles began in Kashmir. A haunting
volume it establishes this Kashmiri-American poet as a very important
poetic contributor to the body of work in English by South Asians.
In this book he focuses on the tragedy of his homeland which has been
devastated by the internal strife wrought on the land with “mass
rapes in the villages/towns left in cinders”. Ali finds that
contemporary history has forced him to return not as a tourist as he
would have liked, but as a witness to the savagery visited upon
Kashmir since the 1990 uprising against Indian rule. Amid rain and
fire and ruin, in a land of “doomed addresses”, Ali evokes the
tragedy of his birthplace. These are stunning poems, intensely
musical steeped in history, myth, and politics all merging into Ali’s
truest mode, that of longing. The Hindu-Muslim conflict reminds Ali
of similar genocidal wars in Bosnia and Armenia but in Kashmir the
blood of victims falls like “rubies on Himalayan snow” while “guns
shoot stars into the sky”. With the population decimated and the Post
Office destroyed, Ali’s poems become “cries like dead letters,” and
the poet becomes “keeper of the minaret.”
Ali’s strong affinity for Urdu is evident in his language which
eerily brings the cadences and drama of South Asia into English
poetry and in a sense each poem translates across the boundaries of
continents to result in a fusion of cultures. He seems to have a very
deep understanding of “words behind the words” as will be seen from
this short poem entitled “Stationery”.
The moon did not become the sun.
It just fell on the desert
in great sheets, reams
of silver handmade by you.
The night is your cottage industry now,
The day is your brisk emporium.
The world is full of paper.
Write to me.
Ali was imbued with the romance of Urdu poetry and he brings to his
work an inventive formalness infused with passion and grief. Kashmiri
myth and culture imbue these poems dramatising the importance of
eastern imagery and the Ghazal while Ali’s vast readings in, and
knowledge of, English Literature shines through in his allusions
which range from Tacitus through to Eliot.
After his death his friend Rukun Advani wrote of him, “In the early
1970s, Agha Shahid Ali already had a high reputation as an Indian
‘University Wit’. He was known in poetry coteries as a connoisseur of
verse, a fund of learning on T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound (he went on to
write a fine Ph. D. on ‘T. S. Eliot as Editor’), a ghazal enthusiast,
an inspiring lecturer of English, a bird of the most dazzling feather
who everyone in our university wanted to look at and hear. His
reputation had spilled out of Hindu College, where he didn’t so much
teach as captivate and infect his students with his knowledge of
Hindustani music, Urdu verse, and the Modernist movement in
Anglo-American poetry. He was much in demand in the other colleges,
where he would invariably be encored and asked to read some of his
own verse.
This he always did with consummate, engaging immodesty. We are all
narcissists in some way, but Shahid had perfected the art of
narcissism. He displayed it unashamedly and was universally loved for
the abandon with which he could be so unabashedly and coyly full of
himself. He was just so disconcertingly free of pretence in this
respect, so entirely unique just for this reason. As he said of
himself once, ‘Sweetheart, I’m successful in the US of A only because
I’ve raised self-promotion to the level of art.’
But he deserved every accolade he got. He had one foot in the realm
of mushairas and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, the other in the world of Western
versification and translation activity. His own achievement was to
blend the two. Eliotic blank verse was, in the main, not for him
because he thought it an easy way out for poets. His own evolution as
a poet is marked by his increased interest in mastering the most
complex verse forms of Europe, such as the ‘canzone’ and the
‘sestina’, and deploying them as moulds for sub-continental ideas,
Kashmiri themes, Urdu sentiment. No one did this as successfully as
Shahid. Literary criticism does not yet possess a proper vocabulary
to describe the ways in which he pushed English poetry in new
directions.”
My own favourite is his “The Wolf’s Postscript to Little Red Riding
Hood”, from A Walk Through The Yellow Pages (pub: Sun Gemini 1987). I
have included it in its entirety because I find it one of the most
engaging and witty pieces of writing of recent times.
“First, grant me my sense of history:
I did it for posterity, for kindergarten teachers and clear moral:
Little girls shouldn’t wander off in search of strange flowers
And they mustn’t speak to strangers.
And then grant me my generous sense of plot:
Couldn’t I have gobbled her up right there in the jungle?
Why didn’t I ask her where her grandma lived?
As if I a forest-dweller, didn’t know of the cottage
under the three oak trees and the old woman who lived
there all alone? As if I couldn’t have swallowed her years before?
And you may call me the Big Bad Wolf, now my only reputation.
But I was no child-molester though you’ll agree she was pretty.
And the huntsman: Was I sleeping while he snipped my thick black fur
and filled me with garbage and stones?
I ran with that weight and fell down, simply so children could laugh
at the noise of the stones cutting through my belly, at the garbage
spilling out with a perfect sense of timing, just when the tale
should have come to an end.”
Yasmeen Murshed is a full-time bookworm and a part-time educationist
. She is also the founder of Scholastica School.

Azer Tag, Azerbaijan
May 22 2004
CHAIRMAN OF MILLI MAJLIS RETURNED HOME FROM STRASBOURG
[May 22, 2004, 11:32:15]
The parliamentary delegation led by chairman of Milli Majlis of
Azerbaijan Republic Murtuz Alaskarov was on a visit to Strasbourg for
participation in conference of Chairmen of the European parliamentary
assemblies.
On May 21, the delegation of parliament of Azerbaijan has come back
home.
At the Heydar Aliyev International Airport Murtuz Alaskarov gave
interview to correspondent of AzerTAj on conclusions of visit.
Chairman of parliament has told: “IN the framework of visit, I have
addressed the Conference on the topic “Civil Europe – parliaments and
participation of citizens”, carried pout fruitful meetings with heads
of the Council of Europe and Parliamentary Assembly, chairman of
Great National Assembly of Turkey, chairmen of parliaments of the
countries of Southern Caucasus and GUUAM.
At a meeting of speakers of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia,
discussed were the questions of signing of the Pact of Stability on
Caucasus, creation of Parliamentary Assembly of the countries of
Southern Caucasus. I have made protest against creation of
parliamentary assembly and have emphasized the opportunity of
carrying out further discussions connected to the Pact of Stability.
As if to restoration and development of our links with Armenia, I
have resolutely stated that until the occupied territories of
Azerbaijan will not be released, while refugees and the IDPs will not
return to their native lands, it is not necessary to speak about it.
The next meeting of speakers of the countries of Southern Caucasus is
planned to carry out in June of this year in the French Versailles
city.
One more interesting meeting has been carried out between speakers of
the GUUAM countries (Uzbekistan is not a member of the Council of
Europe, therefore, did not participate in the meeting). At the
meeting, discussed was the Strasbourg Convention signed in 1998
between the countries GUUAM and has been decided carry out this year
the constituent assembly of Parliamentary Assembly of GUUAM. The said
action is planned for September this year.
At the airport, first vice-chairmen of Milli Majlis Arif Ragimzade,
vice-chairman of Milli Majlis Ziyafet Askarov greeted Chairman of
Parliament Murtuz Alaskarov.

Montreal Gazette, Canada
May 22 2004
Widow ‘didn’t trust banks’
Savings loss a painful end for mom: son. As bitter lawsuit crawls
through court, disciplinary panel considers penalties
Paul Delean
THE GAZETTE
Saturday, May 22, 2004
Ketty Papazian was a 76-year-old widow when she put her north-end
Montreal home up for sale in April 2002 after her savings were
drained by what she believed was misconduct by her broker. She died
in November. Her estate is now seeking millions in damages for what
one lawyer calls “fraudulent manoeuvres” of former broker Harutyun
Migirdicoglu at CIBC Wood Gundy’s downtown office.
CREDIT: PHIL CARPENTER, THE GAZETTE
Two years ago, after her investment account had been emptied by CIBC
World Markets Inc. to pay for somebody else’s trading losses,
76-year-old widow Kiganouchi (Ketty) Papazian put her house in
north-end Montreal on the market.
Then she had an abrupt change of heart.
“She got a very good offer for the house,” son Richard recalled, “but
then she thought, ‘If I sell it, where do I put the money?’ She
didn’t trust banks any more.”
Papazian didn’t sell. It remained her home until last November, when
she died of cancer at age 78.
It was a painful end to a life complicated in its final years by a
bitter, drawn-out and still-unresolved lawsuit with CIBC World
Markets over what happened to her savings.
Ketty Papazian – and now her estate – wanted reimbursement of the
$299,275 that CIBC withdrew from her account.
The estate is seeking $10 million in punitive damages, $400,000 for
portfolio mismanagement, restitution for losses suffered from
liquidation of her investments and payment of legal costs for what
her lawyer called the “fraudulent manoeuvres” of a former broker at
CIBC Wood Gundy’s downtown office.
The lawsuit, filed two years ago, alleges CIBC was professionally
negligent in failing to adequately supervise and control the trading
practices of broker Harutyun Migirdicoglu (also known as Harry
Migirdic), and abusive in making her liable for huge trading losses
run up by people she didn’t know.
There is still no trial date set in Quebec Superior Court.
But a lawyer for the Investment Dealers Association of Canada said
yesterday Migirdicoglu should be barred for life for a long list of
misdeeds.
After an IDA disciplinary hearing in March, the securities industry’s
self-regulatory body found him guilty of multiple counts of trading
without the knowledge or authorization of a client, obtaining account
guarantees under pretense, altering investment objectives and risk
tolerance on Know-Your-Client forms without consent, knowingly
accepting a forged power of attorney and offering a client a $400,000
promissory note to compensate for trading losses without the
knowledge of CIBC.
Migirdicoglu didn’t deny the allegations, but did not plead guilty.
At his hearing yesterday to receive submissions on a suitable IDA
penalty, lawyer Caroline Champagne said the severity of the former
broker’s breaches of the rules warrants a lifetime ban from the
securities industry. She also recommended $370,000 in fines and
another $80,000 to cover investigation costs. An IDA panel is
expected to make its decision by mid-June.
In connection to other civil actions against Migirdicoglu and CIBC,
the IDA said some have settled out of court with CIBC. But lawsuits
seeking $5 million for losses and $55 million in punitive damages
still are making their way through the legal system. The first is due
to come to trial in January.
For Richard Papazian, the death of his mother only strengthened his
resolve to see the matter dealt with by the courts. Of Armenian
descent, she was born in Greece and lived in Argentina prior to
moving to Canada in 1964 with her late husband, Dicran.
When his mother began cancer treatments, he informed CIBC by letter
late in 2002. The bank didn’t budge.
“When she was in hospital, I had to leave her side twice (for
deliberations with CIBC’s lawyers) and felt horrible about it. But
she told me, ‘You have to take care of this. You have to make it
right,’ ” Papazian said.
“We tried every possible way to get back her money without a
$10-million lawsuit, but got nowhere. I want to make sure no bank or
financial institution acts in this way again.”
His mother, whose principal language was Armenian, did not read or
understand English well, Papazian said. She had entrusted about
$400,000 to Migirdicoglu after her husband died in 1990. Migirdicoglu
had looked after her husband’s affairs.
In the lawsuit, it’s alleged Migirdicoglu had her sign a document in
1993 that unknowingly made her responsible for any deficit in the
trading accounts of two other parties – Bedros S.F. Papazian and Aida
Papazian – who were not only unrelated to her, but complete
strangers.
CIBC’s position, as outlined in Superior Court filings by its law
firm Heenan Blaikie, is that Papazian was fully aware of the
guarantee and that she and her son were “complicit in their own
misfortunes.”
It claims it acted in good faith, never failed to properly supervise
its financial consultants and is not legally responsible for the
actions of the broker and any losses suffered by his former clients.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Montreal Gazette, Canada
May 22 2004
Fired broker unrepentant
Insists he was trying to help his clients
Paul Delean
The Gazette
Pic: Money manager Harry Migirdic could be barred for life.
CREDIT: ALLEN McINNIS, THE GAZETTE
Disgraced investment manager Harutyun Migirdicoglu, who a lawyer for
the Investment Dealers Association of Canada said yesterday should be
barred for life for a long list of misdeeds, was a big wheel in
Montreal’s Armenian community, from which he drew many of his
clients.
“To me, he was like God. He lived in a big house, drove a Mercedes. I
was proud to see an Armenian fellow so successful in English
society,” said Richard Papazian, 43, whose late mother was one of his
clients – and he alleges in his suit, one of Migirdicoglu’s victims.
The former CIBC World Markets vice-president, more commonly known as
Harry Migirdic, was a registered investment representative in Quebec
for more than two decades. In 1986, he was made a vice-president at
Merrill Lynch, and in 1990 transferred to the downtown branch of Wood
Gundy – now CIBC.
At both firms, he was the subject of several warnings and
disciplinary measures, including a $30,000 fine at CIBC for knowingly
accepting a power-of-attorney he knew had not been signed by the
owner of an account, according to evidence presented yesterday to a
three-member disciplinary panel of the IDA.
Terminated by CIBC in April 2001, Migirdic has not worked since for
any firm belonging to the Investment Dealers’ Association.
And he won’t again, if the recommendation of lawyer Caroline
Champagne to the panel is accepted.
The panel is expected to make its decision in a couple of weeks.
Migirdic, who swung his briefcase at a Gazette photographer as he
entered the IDA offices yesterday, did not comment on Champagne’s
proposal. But he did say he meant no harm to clients. The abrupt fall
of Wall St. and stocks like Nortel triggered what happened, he said.
The infractions were committed “to cover another account,” he told
the panel. “There was no intent to harm any one client, only to help
another client who was in trouble. I couldn’t help any of my clients
at the end. Everybody suffered.”
The IDA listed 24 rule transgressions during Migirdic’s time as a
CIBC representative. At a disciplinary hearing in March, Migirdic
didn’t deny the allegations, but did not plead guilty. He said all
transactions were done with the clients’ consent, since they’d given
him the mandate to make their money grow. Only when markets went bad
did they complain about his management, he said.
The IDA, however, found him guilty on all counts.
Its preliminary report said more than 20 clients, many of them
elderly, had complained to CIBC about his conduct
In one case, Migirdic had a trading account for a holding company
guaranteeing a trading account opened in the name of his 73-year-old
uncle in Turkey. The guarantee eventually led to the extraction of
more than $691,000 from the company account, cleaning out the owners.
In another case, Migirdic made about 1,400 trades over a seven-year
period in the account of an investor who had listed his risk
tolerance as low. The portfolio shrank by more than 50 per cent
between December 1999 and June 2000, dropping to $471,519 from $1
million.
In yet another case, Migirdic had two longtime clients sign a
document “under the false pretense that it was required for account
maintenance,” the IDA said.
The signatures actually guaranteed the account of someone unrelated
whose trading losses they ended up covering to the tune of $356,824.

Farewell, Little Red Schoolhouse
BY Aida Rogers
Lexington County Chronicle, SC
May 22 2004
Rep. Ted Pitts, right, presents Maro Rogers a proclamation from the
state legislature at her retirement party Sunday while her husband,
Hugh looks on.
Hundreds of students wished their first teacher well when Maro K.
Rogers held her final open house at the Little Red Schoolhouse in
Lexington.
Best estimates are that Rogers taught about 1,500 students in 41
years at the kindergarten.
She taught three generations in some families.
“It’s a part of what Lexington was then, and still is today,”
said Anne Wilkins Brooks who, with her sister Sarah Wilkins Weiss,
attended the school in the 1960s. Brooks enrolled her daughters Baker
and Anna there.
“It’s literally pulling your child up to the white picket fence where
Maro stands, waiting on your child. Each child gets out one at a time,
and that’s how they come out. You don’t dump your kids off and leave
them. It’s an involvement.”
Rogers opened the Little Red Schoolhouse when, as a young mother
of two, she realized there were no kindergartens nearby to educate
her children.
She and husband, former Lexington Mayor H. Hugh Rogers, built a
kindergarten in their back yard on Fox Street.
Helping teach was Rogers’ mother, “Miss Mannig” Kouyoumjian, who
played piano and banjo. Two more children were born, with all four
attending the kindergarten.
As the Rogers children got older, they helped with its annual Christmas
and spring recitals, with Hugh Rogers appearing for 40 straight years
as Santa Claus. At the 2003 Christmas recital, son Clifton took the
role. Daughter Myda Rogers Tompkins has been teaching and providing
piano accompaniment since 1991.
“I learn all the time from my pupils,” Rogers says. “I learned
something just yesterday.”
And they have learned a lot from her.
Rogers is Armenian and a native of Iraq. She came to America via a
scholarship to Columbia College.
At every Christmas recital, students sing “O Christmas Tree,” in
English and Armenian. Likewise, spring recitals of the past have
featured Arabic and Gypsy dancing, as well as music and dancing of
Japan, Hawaii, and the American South.
The Little Red Schoolhouse has always been a kindergarten — not a
day care. Students learned their alphabet and took field trips to
farms, grocery stores, the library, post office and museums. They
did finger-painting and physical exercise.
“It’s much more than playing ball and making crafts,” Anne Brooks said.

Visalia Times-Delta, CA
Tulare Advance Register, CA
May 22 2004
100 years of community
Armenian congregation marks anniversary of first church service in
Yettem
By Mike Hazelwood
Staff writer
Ron Holman/Staff photographer
>>From left, Sark Yahnian, Sylvia Yahnian, Araxie Menendian, Lucinne
Bennett, Rosie Baramian, Carolyn Mikaelian and Hartune Neffian are
members of the St. Mary Armenian Apostolic Church of Yettem. The
congregation will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first church
service on May 30.
Ron Holman/Staff photographer
Lucinne Benett, 86, stands in front of a map depicting Armenian
family homes in 1915 Yettem. Although an artist finished the map,
Bennett and her sister designed it from memories of growing up in the
area.
How to attend
What: Celebration of first Yettem church service 100 years ago
When: 9:45 a.m. May 30
Where: St. Mary Armenian Apostolic Church of Yettem, 14395 Avenue 384
Cost: Services are free and open to public, but banquet to follow is
sold out
YETTEM — As much as life changes in 100 years, much can also stay
the same.
Take the tiny town of Yettem, for example. A century ago it was a
mere speck on Tulare County maps. But it was an area rich on
religious faith.
Today it’s still a speck. And it’s still a spiritual
diamond-in-the-rough.
“The church holds us together,” says Araxie Menendian, 78, a member
of St. Mary Armenian Apostolic Church of Yettem.
Next weekend church members will celebrate the 100th anniversary of
the first church services in Yettem, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it
town north of Visalia.
There was no church or clergymen, just a community of Armenian
settlers embracing a new land.
According to written records, the families met outside Tateos
Davidian’s home. Under a tree, the families of different
denominations — and non-Armenians as well — read scripture, prayed
and sang a hymn translated to “Morning of Light.”
It will all be relived May 30.
“They did what they could,” the church’s Father Vartan Kasparian
says.
The anniversary banquet — which follows a morning full of indoor and
outdoor services — is already sold out, though only a handful of
Armenians still live in the Yettem area. Things change, as the
settling families have branched out across the United States.
But things stay the same, because many Armenians still consider
Yettem a slice of home.
“When you’re in Yettem,” Kasparian says, “especially when you’re
looking up at the Sierras, it feels like you’re back in Armenia.”
He says many locals have grown and moved to bigger Armenian churches
in places like Chicago or Los Angeles.
But they still have love for the church in Yettem, an Armenian word
for “Eden.”
Yettem certainly was a paradise in comparison to the homeland 100
years ago, when the seeds of hate were being planted to become 1915’s
Armenian Genocide, which took 1.5 million lives. Armenians sought
refuge around the world.
“Those who stayed went through hell,” Kasparian says.
They sought religious and cultural freedom. And though they left
their homeland, they found solace with each other in places like
Yettem.
“Everybody knew each other’s sorrows,” says Lucinne Bennett, 86.
And it all started 100 years ago, under a tree, fueled by faith. And
it will continue with next Sunday’s services, under a tree, fueled by
faith.
Life changes, yet stays the same.
“There are generations that will come after us,” Kasparian says. “God
willing.”