2009_12 Hye Sharzhoom Newspaper December 2009

              December 2009
Hye Sharzhoom
3
Armenian Exchange Student Artak
Grigoryan Attends Bullard High
Evelyn K. Demirchian
Staff Writer
Sixteen-year-old Armenian exchange-student Artak Grigoryan
came to the Unites States with several expectations. Never having
visited the United States before,
and only previously studying for a
short time in France, Grigoryan
says he expected the United States
to be, "beautiful, interesting, and
new for me." Grigoryan is here
through   the   World   Heritage
students studying in the United
States through the World Heritage
program, in states such as California to Hawaii, and each student in
the Program works very hard to do
well, maintain good grades, as well
as enrich their lives with the culture
of their newly adopted families and
cities.
Asked what he has enjoyed the
mostabouthis stay so far, Grigoryan
replied, "Fortunately I have a very
good host family and school. My
favorite part of living in Fresno is
being
with my
host family and
going to
high
school."
His host
father is
Fresno-
A r m e -
nian Sister City
Council
Chair
V a h a g n
Bznuni.
An interesting
connection between the
families
is that
Bznuni's
family
was
Exchange student Artak Grigoryan at Bullard High
School, where he is studying for a year.
Photo: Barlow Der Mugrdechian
originally
from the
Foundation's Student Exchange
Program, and he has to submit regular projects and papers to maintain
his scholarship. He is originally
from the city of Sevan, in the
Gegharkunik Province of Armenia, located near the shores of famous Lake Sevan.
Attending Bullard High School
as a senior, Grigoryan has made
many friends and has been enjoying whatFresno has to offer. Studying previously in the south of
France, he says there are many differences and that Fresno "is much
louder... everything is much newer
and cleaner."
There are about 40 Armenian
Lake Sevan region and had left the
country the same day Artak was
born.
"It was really surprising," said
Bznuni, "and it makes an even
deeper connection between us as
Artak."
Much of Artak's time spent here
has been with his host family, going out with his host brother, and
the new friends he has made at
Bullard. "I would recommend the
Program to other students for sure,
because it is a good chance to visit
the United States and improve your
English language, and to study
about American culture," concluded Grigoryan.
Author Mooradian Speaks to Students
Mari Koshkakaryan
Staff Writer
Tom Mooradian, author of The
Repatriate: Love, Basketball, and
the KGB, was invited by theArmenian Studies Program to give a lecture to students at Fresno State on
Friday, October 16.
During his senior year in Southwestern High School in Detroit,
Tom Mooradian was recognized
for his high academic achievements, his amazing basketball talents, and for his bright future. Upon
graduating in 1947, Mooradian
joined a group of repatriates and
headed to Soviet Armenia, where
he completed his Bachelors Degree at the Institute of Physical
Culture and Sport and later shared
his basketball talents as a coach. He
was recognized as an incomparable
basketball athlete in Soviet Armenia. Soon after arriving in Soviet
Armenia, Mooradian felt the need
to return back home to the United
States. However, he soon discovered that returning was not going to
be as easy as he had been made to
believe.
When he joined the American
repatriates, Mooradian was told he
could easily return to his homeland
as desired, but he felt no such freedom.
"They told me that if you don't
like it, you can go back. Not true. I
couldn't go back until 1960," said
Mooradian.
Mooradian continued to share
and describe the lifestyle he lived
in Soviet Armenia during the time
of Soviet rule—the fear and lack of
freedom that he was not accustomed to for someone that came
from the US, a country known for
its freedom. He described his stay
i n B atum i (a port i n southern part of
Georgia) as filthy, with no water
and food. The conditions were unbearable and he was glad to have
not spent more than one week there.
He continued on to Yerevan, where
he described his stay in apartments
that were already falling apart. Everything was being destroyed under Soviet rule.
Mooradian was not the only
United States resident that experienced that lifestyle during Soviet
rule.
Author Tom Mooradian, center, with Fresno State students.
"Americans were upset," said
Mooradian.
He recalled a night in Yerevan
when he woke up from screams
and chaos happening outside his
apartment and as he stared from the
window he saw people being put
behind trucks and taken away. He
wanted to go down and see what
was happening, but he was fortunate to have been stopped from one
of his group members.
"My friend stopped me from
going down. He said if I was lucky,
they would kill me and if not, I
would be put in a truck and would
have disappeared," said Mooradian.
Although he "felt that he was a
coward" to not have stepped down
and confronted the Soviet Union
leaders, he did the right thing as his
life would have been jeopardized.
He described how people lived in
fear—the fear from saying the
wrong thing in public and being
punished by the Soviet government
No one was allowed to speak against
the Soviet government—if they did
they would soon disappear.
He described how students were
killed for speaking out during Soviet rule. He shared a story of his
encounter with a friend, Svetlana,
who was seen crying because she
discovered that her classmates were
no longer going to be joining her.
She went to school one day and saw
two empty chairs and her teacher
said that her friends were not part
of the country and that he wasted
his time teaching them.
Unable to continue living in such
a harsh and terrifying society,
Mooradian decided to write a petition to Moscow to at least let the
poor children escape the horrible
conditions of the Soviet Union.
Having written the petition to the
United States ambassador, it was
approved. He was finally let go to
freely return to his homeland.
Mooradian concluded his powerful, descriptive, and emotional
lecture by stating that we should
feel good for being American.
Americans have the freedom to
move from one place to another
without the fear of being tortured
or killed by the Soviet government.
"I love this country. Although I
enjoyed the Soviet people, the government was something else," said
Mooradian.
Mooradian sentoutthemessage
through his lecture that the liberty
and freedom that comes from being American and living in the
United States should not be taken
for granted.
Mooradian shares more in depth
his experiences living in Soviet
Armenia in his book The Repatriate: Love, Basketball, and the KGB.
This book is not simply facts from
history of how life was during Soviet rule, but is based on his true
experiences—an American-Armenian who journeyed to Soviet Armenia, where what he hoped for
turned into a nightmare and from
where he could not easily escape.
Read
Hye Sharzhoom!
Scholars Present Papers at MESA- Society for Armenian Studies Meets in Boston
Staff Report
The Society for Armenian Studies (SAS) held its 36th Annual
Membership Meeting on November 21, in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Middle East
Studies Association held this year
atthe Marriott Copley Place Hotel
in downtown Boston. The SAS represents more than 250 international
scholars and teachers in the field of
Armenian Studies.
President Richard Hovannisian
of UCLA chaired the SAS meeting
and reported on the major activities
that the Society had organized in
2009. The highlight of the year was
the Anniversary Conference held
at UCLA in March, where dozens
of scholars gathered for a series of
panels on a variety of topics.
Journal ofthe Society for Arme
nian Studies editor Dr. Joseph
Kechichian reported that Volume
18:1 of the JSAS was just released
and the JSAS 18:2 is getting ready
to go to press. Subscription information for the Journal is available
at http://
armenianstudies.csufresno.edu/
sas/ JSAS 18-1. htm.
SAS members also participated
during the year in various conferences, sponsored by other major
scholarly organizations such as the
American Historical Association
and the American Association for
the Advancement of Slavic Studies.
Immediately following the SAS
meeting, the Armenian Library and
Museum of America (ALMA)
hosted a reception for SAS members and guests at their headquarters in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Community members from the
L. to R.: Muge Salmaner, Barlow Der Mugrdechian, Fatma
Ulgen, Rubina Peroomian, and Marc Mamigonian.
Boston area had an opportunity to
meet and interact with SAS members. Guests were given guided
tours of the various exhibits in the
museum, including a new one on
Armenian textiles.
This year's MESA program,
November 21-24, included several
fascinating panels that had a direct
connection to Armenian Studies.
Each panel was scheduled for two
hours and included various presenters and discussants.
Prof. Barlow Der Mugrdechian
(Fresno State) organized a panel on
"Remembrances and Reconciliation: Themes in Armenian and
Turkish Literature" and presented
a paper on "Memory and Identity
in Fethiye Cetin's Memoir My
Grandmother." The 2004 memoir
is aboutCetin and her grandmother,
who had survived the Genocide
and had been adopted into a Turkish family. How Cetin learned of
her grandmother's secret and how
she was affected by it is the core of
the memoir.  Rubina Peroomian
see SAS page 6