MAY 28, A GLORIOUS ANNIVERSARY

Almost nine centuries after the fall of the Bakradouni Kingdom in Armenia and six centuries after the collapse of the Armenian Kingdom in Cilicia, the birth of the Republic of Armenia was a miracle. The dimmest moment in our history became the brightest, when the Armenian nation, like the mythological phoenix, rose renewed from its ashes and established a state on the plains of Mount Ararat. With Western Armenia obliterated by the Armenian Genocide, Eastern Armenia forged its own destiny, ready to participate as a sovereign member in the family of nations, leading the Armenian people to new horizons.

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DEATH OF KEVORK CHAVOUSH

There were names that rose to legendary proportions at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, when Turkish and Kurdish marauding of Armenian peasantry was met with armed resistance by fedayees (freedom fighters). Kevork Chavoush was among the most prominent figures leading that struggle.

He was born Kevork Atamian in 1870, in the village of Megtink, district of Psanats (Sasoun). In 1886 his family sent him to the school of the monastery of the Holy Apostles (Arakelots) in Moush. At school, he heard about Arabo (Arakel Mkhitarian, 1863-1893), one of the founders of the fedayee movement. He decided to join the movement in 1888. He left for Aleppo, where he spent two years working to buy a gun. In 1890 he returned to Sasoun. …

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DEATH OF SOGHOMON TEHLIRIAN

“Tehlirian acted as the self-appointed legal officer for the conscience of mankind,” thought Polish law student Raphael Lemkin and started his quest to establish an universal jurisdiction to pursue the crime of what he would call “genocide.” Soghomon Tehlirian, who liquidated Talaat Pasha, one of the masterminds of the Armenian Genocide, is considered a national hero by Armenians.

Tehlirian was born on April 2, 1896, in the village of Nerkin Bagarij, in the region of Erzinga. He studied at the village school, then at the Protestant school of Erzinga (1905-1906) and at the Central School of Erzinga (1907-1912).

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DEATH OF PARSEGH (GANATCHIAN) GANACHIAN

The best known of Gomidas Vartabed’s “five disciples” and an accomplished composer and choirmaster himself, Parsegh Ganachian is also known as the author of the arrangement for the Armenian national anthem “Mer Hayrenik.”

He was born in Rodosto (Oriental Thrace, today in Turkey) on April 17, 1885. He was the son of a shoemaker, and at the age of three, his family moved to Constantinople, where he received his primary education at the elementary school of Gedikpasha. During the massacres of 1896, the Ganachians moved to Varna, in Bulgaria, where the young Parsegh continued his studies at the local Armenian school and studied music theory, violin, and conducting with violinist Nathan Bey Amirkhanian.

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DEATH OF H.H. CHAKMAKJIAN

Haroutioun Hovhannes (H.H.) Chakmakjian was a chemistry professor, an editor, the author of an extensive English-Armenian dictionary, and the father of a famous Armenian American composer.

Chakmakjian was born in Adana on October 20, 1879, in a family of farmers. He studied at the Apcarian school in Adana, and then at the Antoura French Missionary College in Beirut.

He began his career as a teacher in Caesarea (Kayseri) and Giresun. He taught in Beirut and then moved to Cyprus in 1901, emigrating to the United States in 1904. He eventually settled in Boston and studied at Harvard University (1905-1908). A member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Haroutioun Chakmakjian served as the editor in chief of the Hairenik newspaper…

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DEATH OF CARDINAL GREGORIO AGAGIANIAN

Cardinal Gregorio Agagianian was the foremost Armenian figure of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century, and rose to world fame when in the papal elections of 1958 and 1963 he was about to become the first non-Italian head of the Church in almost 450 years.

Ghazaros Agagianian was born in Akhaltsikhe, in the historical region of Javakhk (now in Georgia), on September 18, 1895. His family was part of the local Armenian Catholic community. After studying at the seminary of Tiflis, he went to Rome, where he studied at the Urban College of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (now Pontifical Urbaniana University) and was ordained a priest in 1917 with the name of Gregorio (Krikor).

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BIRTH OF HOVSEP PUSHMAN

Hovsep Pushman was a well noted painter in the New York in the 1930s, when his contemplative still lifes and sensitive portrait of women reached very high prices.

Pushman was born on May 9, 1877, in Diyarbekir, where his family was in the carpet business. He showed early artistic ability. At eleven, he was the youngest student ever admitted to the Imperial School of Fine Arts in Constantinople.

In 1896, the Pushman family emigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago, where Hovsep studied Chinese culture, immersing himself in Asian art, and began to teach…

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DEATH OF SETRAK BARKHUDARIAN

Sedrak Barkhudarian was born on March 21, 1898, in Haftvan (Iran). He studied at the Nersessian Lyceum of Tiflis (Tbilisi) and graduated from the Faculty of History and Literature of Yerevan State University in 1928. He led archaeological campaigns in 1932-1937 as a researcher at the State Museum of History of Armenia. His discovery of Urartian inscriptions in the Lake Sevan area (Gegharkunik) became the basis for the valuable monograph The Country of Velikuhi (1933). Two years later, he published the book The Classes of Antiquities in Soviet Armenia and the Importance of the Their Conservation, a first of its kind.
The prolific historian, who was also the author of important articles about Armenian medieval history, passed away on May 8, 1970, in Yerevan.

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DEATH OF HRACHIA KOCHAR

Writer Hrachia Kochar, a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, became one of the official voices of Stalinism, but at the end of his life, mounting on the wave of national rebirth in Soviet Armenian, produced the most durable works of his literary career.

He was born Hrachia Kaprielian in the village of Kumlubujakh, situated on the foot of Mount Nepat in the district of Bagrevand (Western Armenia), on February 1, 1910. His mother died on the road to exile in 1916, and he was able to cross into Eastern Armenia with the rest of the villagers, finding shelter in the village of Vagharshapat. His father Kochar (Kocho), who fought along General Antranig, died in 1918.

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BIRTH OF KEVORK MESROB

Kevork Mesrob was a longtime teacher as well as prolific author and public servant both in the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria.

His real name was Kevork Der-Mesrobian and he was born on May 1, 1881, in Bardizag. He studied at the local Nerses-Shushanian and then at the local American high school. Then he was admitted at the Seminary of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which he finished in three years instead of the usual six (1899-1902).

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