Mark Gavoor
There was a time when there were no cell phones, internet or social media, which make communication so easy today. There were telephones (we call them landlines today), and each house had one phone number and one phone that everyone used. Long distance calls were a luxury most folks only used when really good or really bad news had to be communicated, and even then, the calls were brief.
This era began around the 1930s and 40s when most people got their first home telephones. It ended between 2004, when Facebook launched, and 2007, which marked the debut of the first iPhone. Interpersonal communication also took a leap forward after 1984 when the U.S. deregulated phone services. Soon after, service providers started offering unlimited long distance service.
Before then, how did people know when friends and acquaintances had weddings, births, graduations and deaths in their family? They sent letters and telegrams and posted such news in newspapers for their communities. The Hairenik Weekly served that role for its subscribers from its founding and continued to do so when it was renamed The Armenian Weekly. The first generation of Armenians born in this country started to graduate from high school and college, get married and have children during the first 25 years of The Hairenik Weekly.
With the founding of the AYF, Armenian youth got to be lifelong friends with Armenians across the country. They would meet and bond at national events like the annual convention and AYF Olympics and various regional events like AYF Bowling. This generation wanted to keep in touch and stay aware of the comings and goings of their friends and acquaintances. After graduating from high school and college, they began writing for the Weekly and were given columns to report on local events of note. The heyday of this phenomenon seems to have been the 1950s.
The longest-running of these columns were not written by AYFers but set the standard for all that followed. One was called “The Bostonian: Viewing the Hub of the Universe.” It is not clear who wrote this column as it had no byline. Perhaps it was the long-serving Weekly editor James Mandalian or his successor James Tashjian. Another was “This and That from New York” by Levon Keshishian. I believe Keshishian’s column, spanning from the 1940s to at least the 1970s, had the longest run of any column in the Weekly’s history. The first two regional columns covered news from the two most vibrant centers of Armenian life at the time. Let’s look at some of these columns from five issues from the years 1954-56.
“As the nation goes, so does Maine,” written by Anthony Mezoian, was published in the September 30, 1955 issue of the Weekly. There were Armenian communities in Maine and New Hampshire, a part of our history that is barely known or remembered these days. The first paragraph announced the marriage of my father’s first cousin. Here are two excerpts:
I would have loved to see a quote from Bette Davis and a group photo of this event, but none of the columns I read included photos.
From the Midwest, there was a column “On Wisconsin,” by Var Bagdasarian, which opened with the famed Drum Corp from Racine.
It would be great if someone would write the story of the Racine Drum Corps. Maybe there already is one in the archives just waiting to be rediscovered.
Next up is the “West Coast Wire” by none other than Richard Hovannisian. While this was before he became an international spokesman for Armenians, we see a hint of what was to come from this great Armenian.
The same words could be used to describe Professor Hovannisian. He most definitely was a “wealth of knowledge and wisdom” and actually got to see a free and independent Armenia.
The next two columns are related. First, from “The Bostonian”:
This same issue of the Weekly contained Mitchell Kehetian’s column, “Motor City News.” Kehetian had an illustrious career in Detroit. He was a reporter for the Detroit Times when he wrote this column for the Weekly then an editor at the Macomb Daily.
It is not unusual that Kehetian wrote one column and was mentioned in another. As another point of connectivity, Ned Apigian just penned a wonderful article about Jack (Hagop) Tian and his brother Haigus, “A story of two Detroit brothers in war,” published on June 29, 2024.
We go back to the East Coast for “The Philadelphia Story” by Iris Pilbosian. In this column, she shares this tidbit about Dick Keshgegian, who was a pillar of the Philadelphia community.
The last stop in this September 30, 1954 issue of the Weekly is Washington, D.C. Anne Atanosian wrote this “DC Dateline” column about Dr. Sarkis Balassanian. He was from Argentina and attended the World Congress of Cardiologists in the nation’s capital on September 10-19, 1954. In describing Dr. Balassanian’s path to becoming an eminent cardiologist, she spoke to the spirit of the survivor generation and their children.
There were more examples of local reporting in the December 29, 1955 Hairenik Weekly, including two columns from Chicago. The first was the “Windy City Wire” by Diane Nazarian. Here are three updates from her column.
My connections to people mentioned in these articles continue to surprise me, even though I know our community is small and tight knit. We got to know John and Lucille in 1990, the year we relocated to Connecticut. They lived in Fairfield, and we all were members of the Armenian Church of the Holy Ascension in Trumbull. I also grew up listening to the Ardziv Band. When I began to play, we always invited Simon Javizian, the leader of Ardziv, to join us on clarinet and sing a song or two. One of my ouds used to belong to their talented oud player, Harry Bakaian. You can hear him playing it at the beginning of Kaleh Kaleh from their Traveling for Kef album.
Hazel Tatson in “The Voice of the Chicago” reported on the Chicago chapter wanting to start a local newspaper:
What a wonderful and noble idea. I wonder if the paper ever came to fruition. It would be interesting to review a few copies.
Of course, there was a column from Providence. The “Providence Press” was written by Rosalie Kolligian. She announced the birth of her nephew in this particular column:
The name of the newborn was not mentioned in the article. I asked Mike Varadian, who related that it was his cousin Stephen Jay. Sadly, Stephan passed away on September 20, 2000, a few months shy of his 50th birthday. He had battled brain cancer for 22 months. His obituary was in the October 7, 2000 Armenian Weekly.
There were three examples in the September 29, 1955 Weekly of regional columns. Levon Keshishian’s “This and That from New York” talked about the passing of two noted Armenians: Dr. K. Seropian in New York and Dicran Bagdassarian in Tehran. Keshishian wrote about how he and his friend Dr. Seropian would discuss “Armenian politics, literature and international affairs” as well as their shared passion for stamp collecting. He had this to say about Bagdassarian:
There were also two columns from Wisconsin in the 1950s. The second of these was “Racine News” by Corrine DerGarabedian. In one column was this tidbit:
On the other side of the state of New York was Alice Arutunjian who wrote a column, “News and Views From Niagara Falls.”
We now have a beautiful bow of connections between the “The Bostonian” mentioning Mitchell Kehetian, Mitchell Kehetian’s “Motor City News” mentioning Jack Tian, Ned Apigian’s recent article about Jack Tian and this mention of Ned in the “News and Views From Niagara Falls.”
Lastly, in the May 10, 1955 Weekly, I came across “Nutmeg Newsettes: Connecticut Capers” by Mary Kaprealian in which she mourns the loss of a beloved community member, presumably a genocide survivor.
It would take an issue-by-issue investigation to learn when these columns began and ended and how frequently they ran. Clearly, they were popular in the 1950s. The artwork and masthead for each of these columns were unique. Some were clearly hand drawn and all of them used fonts we don’t see much of these days. These columns were, from my perspective, the social media of that era and another example of the treasure trove that is the Hairenik Archives.
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