Emerson N.J. Armenian Nursing Home is No More

Vahe H. Apelian

A panoramic view of the Emerson NJ Armenian Home and its Armenian  Genocide Memorial

I was heartbroken today when I heard that the “Home for the Armenian Aged” in Emerson, NJ had closed a few months ago. Somehow the news of its closure, let alone its imminent closure, was not brought to the attention of the community or it could be that it had, but I had missed it.  I was involved with the Home almost right after I came to the U.S. in July 1976 and until the company, I was going to work for, moved us from NJ in March,1995. In fact, I remember leaving the Board of Trustees meeting, where I had served for at least 10 years, early that day because I was going to drive to OH the following day. The company was going to move the family after the schools ended. We thus came to live in OH for almost a quarter of a century. During that interim, the Home was renamed as  “Armenian Nursing & Rehabilitation Center.”

My father worked there as the chef from 1977 to 1993. In fact, the Home sponsored him as a specialty cook for his permanent  residency leading to his  U.S. citizenship. Through those two decades in NJ, the “Home For The Armenian Aged” became a second home to me. I visited it every week, visiting my father or attending to tasks I had assumed. My father also boarded there in a room on the second vacant floor. 

Not in my wildest dream I would have imagined that the Home will close one day. I doubted the veracity of the news of its closure a friend conveyed to me today. But alas, it has closed, and this is what I read NJ Spotlight had reported on May 10, 2021. 

“After 83 years as a nursing home that filled a unique cultural niche in Emerson, Bergen County, the Armenian Nursing & Rehabilitation Center closed its doors on Easter Sunday, a victim of a changing industry and the coronavirus pandemic.

The Villa at Florham Park, a nursing home in southern Morris County with a 130-year history, is scheduled to follow suit in the weeks to come.

The Armenian home and The Villa, both nonprofits, have received high marks for quality care over the years and together cared for dozens of COVID-19-positive residents who survived, and others who did not. But a combination of long-standing financial challenges, increasingly costly regulatory requirements and expenses associated with the pandemic appear to have pushed them over the edge.

According to a message posted April 2 on the Armenian home’s website: “Over the last several years the Home struggled to compete with the growth of assisted living and home health care services and finally succumbed to the financial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. We want to sincerely thank our residents for allowing us the joy of caring for them over these past 83 years as well as their supportive families and friends.”

I wrote the history of the founding the “Home For The Armenian Aged” in 1993, as the Home marked the 50^th anniversary of its operation and the 55^th anniversary of its founding as a nonprofit organization. I will  present it in my subsequent blogs wondering what happened to the archives I had carefully arranged and saved for posterity that was not to be.

I had ended the story of the Home I wrote, as follows: "The sociologists claim that we are heading towards a graying society and statistical projections predict that an increasing number of the population will need the care of nursing home in the twilight of their later years. Also, there was a large influx of Armenians in the mid-seventies from the Middle East and what was the former Soviet Union, who in case of need more likely will seek the familiarity of their ethnic nursing homes. Such trends indicate that the Home will continue to function as a viable institution well into the twenty first century. However, members of the community need to continue assuming the responsibility of managing the home prudently and soundly. The ever escalating cost of health care, and the dwindling resources, paradoxically coupled with costly increases in compliance standards, ever so more will require the continual community management support to keep the spirit and the purpose of its founders alive and viable, to meet the needs of the once productive Armenian Americans."

The "Home For The Armenian Aged" had surmounted innumerable challengers during its first five decades. But the community had overcome those challenges, but apparently no more. Jerry Bezdikian, summed best. He commented to me, after letting me know of its closure, and wrote: "The news came as a shock to us all. Different times, a different generation with very different priorities." Alas, but sadly true.