Remembering Hovhannes: The Last Chelebian Sibling

 Vaհe H. Apelian

Hovhannes and Kohar (Apelian) Chelibian and family: 
LtoR: Haig, Khatchig, Nora

My maternal uncle Hovhannes Chelebian passed away peacefully in his sleep during his late afternoon nap on Wednesday 5/12/2021, after being bathed and groomed thanks to the round the clock service he received in the Ararat Nursing Facility in Los Angeles. Four years ago, on January 31, 2007,  his sister, my mother Zvart Apelian, passed away while on her chair attending the day's social for the residents of the same exemplary institution for the care of the elderly.  

Hovhannes, much like his father Khatcher, mother Karoun (Apelian), brother Antranig, sisters Zvart and Anna (deceased) was born in in Keurkune, Kessab. He was born on Thursday, August 26, 1926 in his parental house. He lived a long productive life overcoming inordinate challenges all along. He was named after his maternal grandfather Hovhannes - Hanno- Apelian,  who had died during their genocidal exile.

Unlike his brother Antranig and his sister Zvart, my mother; Hovhannes had no formal education having attended school only for a few years in Keurkune, Kessab and hence had ventured into life early on. 

He was tall, handsome, athletic and was extraordinarily gifted mechanic. If Ramanujan was an unschooled mathematical genius, Hovhannes was the unschooled mechanical genius. In his early youth, orphaned without means, he had fashioned for him a hunting gun and by the age of 25 had convinced a few Syrians to partner by investing for him and had opened the first tennis shoe factory in Damascus having designed all the pieces of the manufacturing equipment by himself.  By the age of thirty the company he was instrumental in its founding was overseeing a few hundred employees. He used to tell me in a nonchalant manner but without a hint of being boastful that he was not apprenticed by anyone. 

He was also an ardent nationalist and had joined the Armenian Revolutionary Federation early on and had assumed leadership position in Damascus in charge of community security, that suited his temperament. In 1961/1962, during the upheaval the Armenian community experienced in Syria, he was charged with treason and was jailed. After a long imprisonment he was acquitted of all charges and was released. That was an intense period in our family as my mother regularly went to Damascus to attend to his trial and lend her support to him and his family. Although he was not mistreated during his imprisonment but had witness the mistreatment of his friends who were jailed with him. A few of those who were imprisoned with him were sentenced for long term imprisonment or died in prison. The traumatic experience left an indelible mark on him.

Subsequent to his release there came a period of nationalization in Syria, including the factory he had brought about. Rebellious from his youth he refused to report to the Syrian government placed party official in charge of the factory and opted to resign but was not allowed. He eventually had his way but at a great financial cost. It took him a few years until the governed released him from duty upon him relinquishing his claims to the factory he had built from the ground up.

He returned to Latakia and set up a manufacturing shop. His specialty was in designing and fabricating mechanical presses for the large-scale manufacture of pickaxes, spades, and other farming implements. He also purchased properties in keurkune and set up his apple orchard. He came up in innovative way of digging a deep well for irrigating his orchard and designed a method of watering the trees by a network of pipes that dripped water at the base of the trees. He also fabricated a machine that sorted different size apples and lastly, he fabricated his own pistol which to his great regret was stolen from his house during the past civil war unrest in Syria. Previously, he fabricated a larger than life size April 24 memorial for the Armenian community in Latakia in the form of a decapitated tree trunk, with the axe embedded in it, having a branch rise from the periphery. The trunk consisted of 12 leaning panels, much like the number of stone slabs of the Genocide memorial in Armenia, but covered at the top to give the shape of a decapitated tree trunk flattened on top.

He married young, when he was in his early twenties to Kohar Apelian, also from Keurkune. They had fallen in love. They became parents to Nora, Khachig and Haig. Nora passed away a few years ago and his wife a little bit more than a year ago before his admission to the nursing home after incurring a stroke. For all practical purpose he became handicapped without his wife. Brilliant with machines but he could not fix a cup of coffee for himself and relied on his wife. They were inseparable. 

He was the exact opposite to his brother Antranig who was fastidious and not impulsive, as he was. But both were talented. Antranig, a historian, cartographer, calligrapher, and a medical illustrator, was a long-time instructor of physiology for the medical, pharmacy and nursing students in the American university of Beirut. In his youth, Antranig had assumed a leadership role helping organize the great repatriation to Armenia in 1947. He believed that the security and the viability of Armenia was better assured in the Soviet Union and hence he supported Soviet Armenia, while his brother Hovhannes opposed it on ideological ground. During my childhood and early youth, I experienced intense debates in our household. Both in their own ways were resolute and firm believers in what they advocated and stood firm. During those years, many families split apart because of their opposing views. But the Chelebian siblings, who had lost their father very early on and had grown up as driven orphans, remained a family to the end, with my mother acting as the peacekeeper between her two brothers. The sons and surviving daughter of the Khatcher and Karoun (Apelian) Chelebian, Antranig, Hovhannes and Zvart, enriched my life beyond measure. I would not have wanted my life otherwise and it would have been much poorer without them.

Hovhannes kept his creative streak to the very end. During my last visit to him he showed me a support he had fabricated that he dragged behind him while working in the backyard. Time had ravaged his body and he had tripped and fallen a few times while doing gardening in his home in Los Angeles where they had moved to be close to their son. The wooden structure he had fabricated was a combination of stepstool in a frame that he said would help him crawl into it and step by step enable him to sit on a step at a time and thus  help him rise on his feet. 

He was also tinkering to build a mechanical perpetual wheel that would turn around on its own with ball bearing falling on levels he explained to me. He was still figuring the intricacies of the design in his mind, he said.  

After long and productive and yet challenging years, he now rests in peace and has the time at his hand to see his device come to fruition. I am sure, in one way or another, he will accomplish it in heaven what physics on earth claims that it is a mechanical impossibility 

I take comfort knowing that the sons and daughters of the orphaned genocide survivors Khatcher and Karoun (Apelian) Chelebian,  Antranig, Zvart, Hovhannes, and Anna, the youngest child whom the family lost at young age due to illness, are now united in eternity. 

LtoR: Hovhannes, Khatcher, Zvart, Antranig, Karoun, Anna Chelebian.

 

Love During Medz Yeghern

 

Vaհe H. Apelian

Colorized copy of the black and white picture

The award-winning novelist Chris Bohjalian wrote the Sandcastle Girls in 2002. The news of the novel's publication was enthusiastically anticipated and received by the Armenian community, even before it hit bookstore shelves.

A quarter-of-century before Sandcastle Girls, journalist and editor Antranig Dzarougian (Անդրանիկ Ծառուկեան) wrote a novel in Western Armenian titled "Love in the Yeghern" (Սէրը Եղեռնին Մէջ). Medz Yeghern is a term that the survivors of the Armenian Genocide coined to refer to the horrible reality of their dispossession - of loved ones, of property, and of the loss of their millennia-old way of life on their ancestral lands. Simply said, it Medz Yeghern means genocide.

Both novels are love stories. Sandcastle Girls is a story within a story. Amazon.com describes with these words: “When Elizabeth Endicott arrives in Aleppo, Syria, she has a diploma from Mount Holyoke, a crash course in nursing, and only the most basic grasp of the Armenian language. It’s 1915, and Elizabeth has volunteered to help deliver food and medical aid to Armenian Genocide survivors. There she meets Armen, a young Armenian engineer who has already lost his wife and infant daughter. After leaving Aleppo and traveling to Egypt to join the British Army, he begins writing to Elizabeth, realizing that he has fallen in love with the wealthy young American. 
 Years later, their American granddaughter, Laura, embarks on a journey through her family history, uncovering a story of love, loss—and a wrenching secret that has been buried for generations.”

"Love in the Yeghern" is based on the true love story of the eminent early 20th-century Armenian poet Roupen Sevag, who studied medicine in Switzerland and fell in love and married a German woman. The novel is a true depiction of their love with a fictional rendering of their daily lives and their interactions with the community leaders of the day and about the cultural and their political state of affairs of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Most of the other characters in the book are also depictions of prominent Istanbul Armenians. The characters are referred to either by their first or family names. However, for anyone who has a basic knowledge of Western Armenian culture that blossomed after remaining dormant for centuries and hit its zenith just before the Genocide, it would not be difficult to surmise who Dzarougian refers to when he describes characters named Varoujan, Adom, Zartarian and many more.

Love in Medz Yeghern by Antranig Zarougian

Roupen Chilingirian Sevag was born in Silvri, Ottoman Empire on Feb. 15, 1885. After graduating from the famed Berberian Armenian School in Istanbul he went to Lausanne, Switzerland where he studied medicine and fell in love and married a vibrant woman named Janni Apell. Instead of remaining in Europe, the young couple decided to return to Istanbul in 1914 with their two children and build their home there, among Roupen’s community. Their decision proved to be fatal.  Roupen was arrested not long after, on April 24, 1915, and was tortured to death on August 26, 1915, in Çankır (Chankir), Turkey along with poets Taniel Varoujan, Siamanto and others. He was 30-years-old. It is alleged that he had the opportunity to spare his life had he agreed to a Turkish pasha offering him to marry his daughter. 

Sevag is known for his patriotic and humanistic poetry. He is fondly remembered to this day. In 1995, a school was named after him in Yerevan. In 2011 Armenia issued a stamp in his honor. In the 1980s Roupen Sevag’s nephew, Hovhannes Chilingirian, founded and ran the Roupen Sevag family museum in Nice (France). Along with artifacts the museum displayed his paintings. Roupen Sevag was also an accomplished painter. The museum was moved to Holy Etchmiadzin in 2013. 

After her husband’s death, Janni - her real name was Yanni Apfel-Sevag - moved to Switzerland with her children. Distraught that German government did not heed her calls and abandoned her husband, she vowed not to utter German in her home any more and refused to teach her children German. Instead, she became an award-winning French writer and upheld the memory of her husband until her death in 1967.  Their son Levon Chilingirian passed away in 2005 at the age of 93. Their daughter Shamiram in 2016 in Nice, France at the age of 102.

Dzarougian depicts Sevag's wife in the Love in the Yegher, as follows: “Janine wrote poetry in French and published them in books. One of her books received an award from the French Academy. She lived engrossed in her books and in her children Levon and Shamiram. With the passing years ashes covered her hair, but not her heart. Her heart remained fresh and vibrant defying time and the years with an indifference but always open, always graceful on white pages and in her thoughts with her Roupen…”.

Kourken Mekhitarian noted in his review of Armenian literature that following his death Sevag had emerged as a tragic but iconic and heroic figure and that his life could be the subject of a captivating novel. Dzarougian’s novel "Love in the Yeghern" makes for a captivating reading and makes justice to the young couple’s love story. The novel awaits translation.

Roupen Sevag and his wife.

 

Finding rare books among Vahe Setian’s collection

 Vaհe H Apelian

 

Vahe Setian's collection of rare books donated to the prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic
Church - Courtesy Horizon Weekly

 I read today in “Horizon” Weekly that Vahe Setian’s daughter Ms. Mayda Setian and Mrs. Lena Setian-Der Kaloustian, have donated their father’s large private collection of rare books to the prelacy of Canada. 

The announcement invoked memories in me. Hamazkayin Publishing House is named after Vahe Setian. His business office was found in down town Beirut. If my recollection serves me well it was on the Allenby Street where my father ran his inn “Hotel Lux”. In any event it was a rather short walking distance from my father’s place. I have been there at the Setian’s office with my uncle Antranig Chalabian.  It happened when Antranig Chalabian was collaborating with Dr. Stanely Kerr.

My uncle Antranig Chalabian assisted Dr. Stanley Kerr for writing his book “The Lions of Marash” by providing to the professor primary sources and eye witness accounts for the professor's research. I accompanied my uncle a few times searching for a book or interviewing. I visited with him Vahe Setian’s office where he apparently kept his collection of rare books. 

A few months after the publication of the book “The Lions of Marash”, Antranig Chalabian wrote his recollection as how the book came about in Antranig Zarougian’s “Nairi” Weekly in Beirut, on December 2, 1973. He titled his article “A Big Book’s Little Story”.

I translated Antranig Chalabian’s article and had it published in Keghart.com on September 1, 2012. 

This is what Antranig Chalabian wrote about Vahe Setian’s collection of rare books.  “I continued to search for the book through Librarie Du Liban. I wrote to friends in Paris, but to no avail. Then someone told me to check Vahe Setian’s private collection. Giving the benefit of the doubt that a personal collector would have a book the libraries did not, I visited Vahe Setian to inquire. Not only I found the book I was looking for in his collection, I also found additional seven historical books in French about the Cilician tragedy.”

Antranig Chalabian’s wrote how Dr. Stanley Kerr’s book came about. Their association led to friendship. The Stanleys hosted my uncle and his wife in Princeton where they lived, when my uncle and his wife visited America. 

I linked my translation of my uncle Antranig Chalabian’ s “A Big Book’s Little Story” below for those who are interested to learn the fascinaitng story of the serendipitous events that led Dr. Stanley Kerr write and publish "The Lions of Marash".

Antranig Chalabian: A Big Book's Little Story: https://vhapelian.blogspot.com/2021/07/antranig-chalabian-big-books-little.html

 

Finding rare books among Vahe Setian’s collection

Vaհe H Apelian

 

Vahe Setian's collection of rare books donated to the prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic
Church - Courtesy Horizon Weekly

 I read today in “Horizon” Weekly that Vahe Setian’s daughter Ms. Mayda Setian and Mrs. Lena Setian-Der Kaloustian, have donated their father’s large private collection of rare books to the prelacy of Canada. 

The announcement invoked memories in me. Hamazkayin Publishing House is named after Vahe Setian. His business office was found in down town Beirut. If my recollection serves me well it was on the Allenby Street where my father ran his inn “Hotel Lux”. In any event it was a rather short walking distance from my father’s place. I have been there at the Setian’s office with my uncle Antranig Chalabian.  It happened when Antranig Chalabian was collaborating with Dr. Stanely Kerr.

My uncle Antranig Chalabian assisted Dr. Stanley Kerr for writing his book “The Lions of Marash” by providing to the professor primary sources and eye witness accounts for the professor's research. I accompanied my uncle a few times searching for a book or interviewing. I visited with him Vahe Setian’s office where he apparently kept his collection of rare books. 

A few months after the publication of the book “The Lions of Marash”, Antranig Chalabian wrote his recollection as how the book came about in Antranig Zarougian’s “Nairi” Weekly in Beirut, on December 2, 1973. He titled his article “A Big Book’s Little Story”.

I translated Antranig Chalabian’s article and had it published in Keghart.com on September 1, 2012. 

This is what Antranig Chalabian wrote about Vahe Setian’s collection of rare books.  “I continued to search for the book through Librarie Du Liban. I wrote to friends in Paris, but to no avail. Then someone told me to check Vahe Setian’s private collection. Giving the benefit of the doubt that a personal collector would have a book the libraries did not, I visited Vahe Setian to inquire. Not only I found the book I was looking for in his collection, I also found additional seven historical books in French about the Cilician tragedy.”

Antranig Chalabian’s wrote how Dr. Stanley Kerr’s book came about. Their association led to friendship. The Stanleys hosted my uncle and his wife in Princeton where they lived, when my uncle and his wife visited America. 

I linked my translation of my uncle Antranig Chalabian’ s “A Big Book’s Little Story” below for those who are interested to learn the fascinaitng story of the serendipitous events that led Dr. Stanley Kerr write and publish "The Lions of Marash": A Big Book's Little Story: https://vhapelian.blogspot.com/2021/07/antranig-chalabian-big-books-little.html

 

 

  

From Vahe to Vahe, Վահէ-էն, Վահէ-ին

Vaհe H Apelian

Vahe Berberian

Today I received the embedded snap shot from my former high school classmate Vaghenag Tarpinian. The picture depicts the Tarpinians, Vaghenag and his wife Shoghig with Vahe Berberian. It turns out Knights of Vartan had invited Vahe Berberian to New Jersey to stage one of his comedy acts. 

It must have been in early 1970's. I was a member of the ARF Zavarian College Student Association having progressed there from my youthful days as a member of the Papken Sunni Badanegan (adolescent union), to Zavarian middle/high school Student Association and on.  All of them happened in the same community center in what nowadays is known as West Beirut. 

ARF Zavarian Association seniors oversaw the workings of the Zavarian juniors. I was a committee member then and involved with the junior. Vahe Berberian, early in his teens, caught my attention. He stood apart from the rest. Lean, tall, with hair  smoothly flowing, hands often in the pockets of his jeans,  walked stooped gait, with an hunched over posture. It may have been his growth spur. He was towering the rest of his friends.  But most of all, it was his overall mannerism that caught my attention and stirred my curiosity to the point that I wanted to know more about this junior. Everything about this young student looked so different that I made a point of meeting his parents to find out more about him.

One day the opportunity presented itself and I drove him in my car to their house. We had recently moved from (west) Beirut to Antelias, a walking distance from the Catholicosate of Cilicia. It turned out Vahe Berberian's family also lived in Antelias, a bit further uphill from our house 

Theirs was the everyday Armenian hospitable family. They hosted me cordially, knowing that I am a senior member overseeing the juniors. There was othing unusual that stood apart in their family. But there was an unmistakable similarity between Vahe and his mother, both physically and in mannerism. In later years Vahe would crack jokes about his mother but he made his father the protagonist of a novel he wrote. That became the only time I spent time with Vahe Berberians for any appreciable length of time. 

Civil war came upon us and all of us got scattered. I heard that he had moved to Canada. Decades later I started reading about him in the Armenian media, that he was in LA and has blossomed into a writer, painter, playwright, stand alone comedian, actor.  I wrote him a letter inviting him to Cincinnati for a few days of rest and relaxation away from the hustle and bustle of the Armenian community in Los Angeles. He wrote that he was busy preparing for his next comedy and sent a copy of his newly published  book. He had personalized it "From Vahe to Vahe"  It rhymes much better in Armenian, (Վահէ-էն, Վահէ-ին). That young boy, the blossoming genius of which he seemed not to be aware, who could not bring himself to graduate from the Sophia Hagopian High school he attended, as did my brother.

Vahe Berberian has now become an Armenian cultural icon. I appreciated him sending word with my friend. «Vahe says hi to Vahe» wrote to me Vaghenag.

 

Օ՜-Hai-Օ՜ (Օ՜-Հայ-Օ՜)

Vaհe H Apelian

«Ապուշին մէկը պէտք է ըլլաս եթէ չգիտնաս որ Ամերիկայի Միացեալ Նահանգները Հայկական են» - Ստեփան Բարթամեան

“You must be a fool not to know that the States of the United States of America are Armenian”.

 

"Our History"  (see the note)

The quote is from the well-known comedian and satirist Stepan Partamian.

I learned that the first Armenian settlement in the United States of America was planned in the State of  Ohio, the Buckeye State. (see the note).

According to a Grade-5 student history book by the late Dr. Garabed Momjian, for Armenian Schools in the U.S., Khatchadour Vosganian was the first Armenian student who came to the United States in 1834 and studied at the University of Columbia in New York. After his graduation, he wrote about the Armenians in American newspapers. He also had a vision to establish an Armenian community settlement in the United States of America.

Vosganian had a friend named James Benet, who came from a wealthy family who owned large tracts of land in the sparsely populated State of Ohio. Benet promised Vosganian to give him a large parcel of land to have an Armenian community there. Vosganian wanted to name the new community “New Ani” after the famed Armenian city Ani. He drew up the map of the community and wanted to rename its streets Van, Mush, Zeitoun, Garin. 

According to the story, Vosganian could not attract enough Armenian peasant families from historical Armenian lands to come and settle in the community he planned to have because they were concerned that eventually their children will be assimilated.

Vosganian lived to 1900’s and took part in organizing the Armenian communal life but his dream of New Ani as an Armenian community in the State of Ohio never materialized.

There seems that a remnant of his dream remained in the name of the State that sounds Օ՜-Hai-Օ՜ (Օ՜-Հայ-Օ՜). A sounding David Krikorian used when he appealed to the Armenians in Ohio to support him in his efforts to have the State of Ohio recognize the Armenian Genocide, and he did. (see the link below).

                                            ***

Note: «Մեր Պատմութիւնը» Հինգերորդ Դասարան. Պատրաստեց Կարօ Մոմճեան. Հրատարակութիւն՝ Հիւսիսային Ամերիկայի Արեմտեան Թեմի Ազգային Առաջնորդարանի.Լոս Անհելոս, 1994.

Link: How did Ohio recognize the Armenian Genocide    https://vhapelian.blogspot.com/2019/03/how-did-ohio-recognize-armenian-genocide_22.html

Memorable moments – Not regulation size

Vahe H Apelian

 

It may seem strange. But that picture of the die-hard fisherman led me write this blog about a memorable moment etched in my memory.

Often times it is the small gestures that leave a lasting impression, not only about the person who rendered it, but also of the  people and the things you may associate with the person. 

When we were in Cincinnati, we attended Montgomery Baptist Church that later changed its name to Montgomery Community Church. A serendipitous encounter with Gilbert Badeer had led us to the church we ended up attending for the next almost a quarter of century. As to Gilbert Badeer, he is the son of Dr. Henry Badeer, my late uncle Antranig Chalabian’s former boss as the chairman of the physiology department of the American University of Beirut medical school, where my uncle worked until he moved to the U.S. Marie and her mother had met Gilbert the day the movers had the family move from New Jersey. They happened to be, of all places, in a hardware store when Gilbert had approached them and asked teasingly, in what language they are conversing. Then, he had replied to them in the same, leaving them dumbfounded hearing Armenian in Ohio from a blue-eyed person Gilbert is.

At one time, during a social at the church when asked, I let the person know that I come from Beirut, Lebanon, making sure that he heard me say Beirut. It had happened before that when asked, I had only said Lebanon. But eye brows were raised because Lebanon is a fairly well-known town not far from Cincinnati and surely my accent had betrayed my claim to be from Lebanon they mostly knew. 

The person with whom I got into conversation, had never been in Lebanon but he spoke highly of the Lebanese He said his former brother-in-law was a Lebanese. Tragically his wife, my recounter’s sister, had died in that accident. A year or two after the tragedy, his former Lebanese brother-in-law, he said, had paid them a visit letting them know that he had met someone whom he intended to marry, but had wanted first tell his deceased wife’s family of his intention and sought their approval and blessing that he will be starting a new phase in his life without their daughter and sister. Needless to say, that he had left an indelible impression on them not only about him but about the Lebanese as well.

                                            ***

In Cincinnati, Ohio, Marie and I would hit easy trails. At one time we were hiking along a tributary of the Ohio river. If my recollection serves me well, the trail was known after the legendary  Daniel Boone. We had hiked pretty far and I started getting concerned because we appeared to be the only ones along the trail and we had not told anyone else of our hiking plans there. We had stumbled on the trail.  As we were just to start heading back when I heard loud voices and a boat came in view with young men on the boat having the time of their lives getting wild and loud with beer bottles in their hands.  They also had their fishing lines onto the water as the current swept their boat downstream. We saluted and I shouted “How is the fishing?”. The response I heard has remained etched in my memory. One of them said that they caught a fish but it was not regulation size so they had it released.

Not of regulation size and they had it released in the midst of wilderness where no one would have checked on their fishing haul, had they kept it. It was not a response I expected to hear from them.  Yes, I retain favorable impressions of Ohio and its people, and of Steve, of Rick and of Brian, who were David’s friends. 

Also, not only Ohio  sounds a bit Armenian, but the first Armenian settlement in the U.S., hard to believe, was intended to be in Ohio (see link 1 below). I am also reminded of the saying, “a bad fishing day is always better than a good working day.”  

 

Link 1: Օ՜-Hai-Օ՜ (Օ՜-Հայ-Օ՜)- https://vhapelian.blogspot.com/2025/05/from-vahe-to-vahe.html

Link 2: How did Ohio recognize the Armenian Genocide - https://vhapelian.blogspot.com/2019/03/how-did-ohio-recognize-armenian-genocide_22.html