Vahe H. Apelian
Traditionally the Chairman of the Board of the Trustees and the President of the Corporation have been vested in one person and had been the case with the presidents presented here and continues to this day. The current president of the Home and the chairman of its Board of Trustees is the well-known community leader Andrew Torigian.
AROUSIAG JERAHIAN
Aroosiag Jerahian was the lady who led the founding members of the New Jersey Home For The Armenian Aged.
There was no biographical information in the archives of the Home when this article was written and information about her was sketchy. On the hallway wall of the Armenian Presbyterian Church in Paramus, there were and may still be photographs dating back to the early 1930s where some of the founders of the Home are identified, including Arousiag Jerahian.
In her memoirs, she comes across as a woman of determination and conviction who is very meticulous about dates. She was undoubtedly endowed with leadership qualities. The women who initiated the efforts towards establishing a residence for the Armenian aged went to her and asked her to assume the leadership of their group. In her memoir, she reveals that upon assuming the chair of the self-motivated group of women, she asked every one of the groups to take a solemn vow to work together for life, if need be, towards the realization of their mutual goal.
She was elected the president when the corporation was founded in 1938 and became a life member of the Board of Trustees. She witnessed the realization of their goal when they bough the Home grounds in 1943. In 1948 she moved to California with her husband but kept in touch with the Home and continued to support the Home by writing articles about the Home in Armenian newspapers. She also visited the Home and attended the Fathers’ Day picnic.
The records of the United Armenian Congregational Church in North Hollywood indicate that she died on December 1965.
KEGHAM (KEGAN) YEZDANIAN
Mr. and Mrs. Arousiag Jerahian moved to California on January 6, 1948. Kegham Yezdanin acted as the interim president until May 16, 1948, when he was elected as the president of the Home For The Armenian Aged Inc. during the yearly general membership meeting.
Mr. Kegham Yezdanian was born in Bitlis, being of the eight siblings. At the age of four, his parents moved and settled in Constantinople where he attended Mesrobian Armenian School and the Yessayan Varjaran.
He immigrated to the United States in 1921 and married shortly after his arrival. Mr. Yezdanian started his own business in textiles and became very successful. His firm employed 55 employees and boasted the most modern equipment and produced 15 to 18 percent of the total domestic production in his line of textile specialty. He was also very active in professional organizations and associations.
Mr. Yezdanian was very supportive of Armenian organizations but had not taken part in them being very engrossed in his business. The Home For The Armenian Aged was the first Armenian organization he became involved.
KARNIG H. SOLAKIAN
Mr. Kegham Yezdanian resigned at the end of his term and the Board of Trustees elected Karnig Solakian as the next president on June 11, 1950. His presidency, however, lasted only two weeks. He passed away on June 24, 1950, from a massive heart attack. His election immediately followed by his incapacitation and untimely death spanned in a tragic sequence. But his legacy went well beyond the nominal few days he served as the president of the Home.
Karnig Solakian has supported the founding of the Home from its very inception. He was instrumental in securing the purchase of the adjacent properties of the Home through Mr. Dikran Dedourian’s benevolence. He was the first chairman of the Home picnics, which he built in the course of the next five years as an annual event. He also acted as the Chairman of the many committees of the Home. Much of the progress of the Home in its crucial formative years is credited to his years of experience with the New York Welfare Department, where he had felt the need for an old age home for the Armenians. After his death a plaque was placed in the Home with the following inscription: “In abiding gratitude to Karnig H. Solakian 1887-1950, for his sacrificial efforts in the establishment of this Home For The Armenian Aged”.
A special eight pages Hyedoun issue (Vol. III, No. 6-7, June-September 1950) was printed titled: “Memorial Issue Dedicated to Our Beloved President”. Community leaders bestowed accolades, both in Armenian and in English, on the newly deceased offering condolences to “his son Aress, his daughter Anahid, two sisters Mrs. Lucy Parsekian of North Bergen and Mrs. Maritza Nahigian of Springfield, Mass., his fiancé Agnes B. Cherekjian of Carlstadt, New Jersey.”
On June 14, 1951, exactly one year after his death, his ashes were buried in the Home ground, which has been his expressed wish. Rev. Bedros Apelian performed the religious ceremony. Rev. Charles Vartanes reviewed his life through the years of service to his people stating that Mr. Karnig Solakian showed a deep concern for the underprivileged people and exhibited a determination to help them in his way, through welfare groups and political actions and concluded that Mr. Karnig Solakian will go down in Armenian history as one of its most outstanding men.
AGNES BARBARA CHEREKJIAN HALADJIAN
After Karnig Solakian’s death, the Board of Trustees on September 19, 1950, elected Miss Agnes Barbara Cherekjian as the next president.
Ms. Agnes was affiliated with the Home since the very beginning. In 1945 young men and women had gathered and formed an organization called Junior Home For The Armenian Aged Inc. She became its president and the Chairwoman of various committees and also served on various other committees.
Ms. Agnes B. Cherekjian was a graduate of the New York University with a B.S. (cum laude), an M.A. in Religious Education. She had been the president of the Administrative Committee of the Christian Youth Council of New Jersey. She had also been the New Jersey representative on the Administrative Committee of the Christian Youth Council of North America. She had held the position of Minister of Religious Education in several churches in New York and New Jersey.
On September 7, 1952, Agnes and Jack Hagop Haladjian were married in the church in Radburn, Fair Lawn where he had been the Minister of Religious Education. The ceremony was officiated by Rev. Bedros Apelian of the church in Radburn and Dr. Edward J. Campell from Plainsville, N.Y.
Agnes B. Cherekjian Haladjian continued to serve as the president of the Home until May 1953, when she declined to continue the presidency any longer. Mr. and Mrs. Agnes and Jack Haladjian chaired the 11th annual picnic on June 20, 1954.
ARMENAK (ALBERT) MARDIROSSIAN
Right after the resignation of Mrs. Agnes B. Cherekjian Haladjian, the Board of Trustees elected in 1953, Mr. Armenak Mardirossian as the fourth president, a position to which he was re-elected until his death in 1989. He was elected to the Board of Trustees in 1951. His tenure marked with unprecedented growth. He played a pivotal role at every expansion of the Home.
Mr. Armenak Mardirossian was born in Bulgaz, Bulgaria on October 17, 1905, to Kaspar and Haiganoush Mardirossian. His father left Dikranagerd following the 1895 massacres and joined the Bulgarian Army. After his honorable discharge, he was made an honorary citizen of Bulgaria where his family remained for several years. Kaspar labored as a manufacturer of religious pictures and stained glass. The Mardirossians returned to Constantinople in 1907 following the overthrow of the Sultan and the institution of short-lived deceptive democratic reforms. Being in the capital city of the Ottoman Empire, Mr. Armenak Mardirossian survived the massacres but witnessed the tragedy that befell upon his people. In 1921 he left for America.
The bright young man who had mastered several languages growing up in Constantinople caught the attention of the Ellis Island officials when he volunteered to be a translator. Impressed by the performance of the young adult, the officials let him leave the island well before the rest as it coincided with a long holiday. Years later, historians had found a notation to that regard and tracked him down and interviewed him on national television when the restoration of the Statue of Liberty was underway.
A year after his arrival to the U.S. Armenak Mardirossian sponsored his parents and brother to join him. In America, he became a successful real estate developer.
His services to the Home are best summed in the inscription of the plaque presented o him in 1967 by the founders of the Home. The plaque bears the following inscription:’ A tribute to Armenak Mardirossian whose unselfish devotion and pioneering leadership as president of HOME FOR THE ARMENIAN AGED during the past 18 years have contributed immensely toward the achievement of our goad. May he be blessed with health and happiness.”
Mr. Armenak Mardirossian continued to serve the home until the very last day of his life, until he was hospitalized because of a massive heart attack from which he never recovered and passed away almost two weeks later, on May 26, 1989. He was 83 years old.
ZAREH KALOUST KAPIKIAN
After Armenak Mardirossian death, the Board of Trustees elected Zareh K. Kapikian as the president of the Home. He had acted as the vice-president of the Home for many years.
Mr. Zareh K. Kapkian was born in Sepastia on April 16, 1888. He was the youngest of six brothers. Hew as the son of Kaloust Kapikian and Anna Mazmanian Kapikian. Even since his early youth, he was an active participant of the Armenian Apostolic Church He graduated from the Aramian High School when where he played on the soccer team. The course of his life changed by the brutal onset of the genocide of the Armenian in 1915. He experienced first hand the horrors of the genocide and the death of 13 members of his immediate family. He survived and immigrated to America in 1920.
In America, he continued to be very active in the Armenian community. He was a founding father of the St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral and of the Holy Martyrs Armenian Church projects. He served as the Commander of Knights of Vartan Haigazian Lodge. He was active in the Pan Sebastia patriotic Union. He served as its president for 17 years.
He died in 1989 office a few months after his election as the president of the Home.
As an added note, he was the father of Albert Zaven Kapikian M.D. (1930 – 2014) who “was an Armenian-American virologist who developed the first licensed vaccine against rotavirus, the most common cause of severe diarrhea in infants. He was awarded the Sabin Gold Medal for his pioneering work on the vaccine” Wikipedia.
PAUL KESHISHIAN O.D.
After Zareh Kapikian’s death, on November 1989, the Board of Trustees elected Dr. Paul Keshishian on as the president of the Home. Dr. Keshishian had joined the Board of Trustees in 1986, shortly after assuming the position of Medical Director of the Home For The Armenian Aged.
Dr. Paul Keshishian graduated from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1979 and is board certified in family practice.
He was the president of the Home when I resigned from the Board in 1995.
Others have assumed the presidency after Dr. Paul Keshishian and chaired the Board of Trustees. The current president is Andrew Torigian.
No comments:
Post a Comment