Gananian / MD TURNINGS AND THOUGHTS

TRAIPSING THROUGH A DOER'S LIFE DO NOT CONFUSE ACTIVITY WITH ACTION
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-0983-6270-6
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 196 Seiten

A MEMOIR IN VIOLATION. AN EXCUSE TO TALK ABOUT A LOT OF THINGS

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gananian, Myron

MD,

Leseproben

Chapter 1:
Back to Myron and Others The personal relationship with my immediate forebears is quite limited. There are movies showing my paternal great-grandfather cradling me, less than a year old, in uptown Manhattan. I never inquired and was never told how he left to come to the US. Then there is the very sketchy story of the Amazing Gananian Siblings. They are in decreasing age my father Leo’s siblings: Jack, Mary, George, and Serge, with Leo, second oldest. Three or four others, including twins, never made it and are lost to history. Their story has two components; the first placing in a bright light the cruelty and falsity of Mohammedin Turkey or the Ottoman Empire and the second their almost mythical determination to survive, succeed and to become contributors to their next, adopted and welcoming homes, France and the United States. Jack and Leo left early enough to avoid the overtly sanguinary decades erroneously called the First Genocide of The Twentieth Century as if being The Second did not attach sufficient fame or even honor to this unspeakable tragedy. It is certain that Jews would prefer to have been left out of this contest. If it is of interest to the reader the Very First was, not surprisingly, efficiently carried out in German West Africa resulting in the near total elimination of two tribes in what is now Namibia, in the first decade of the twentieth century, capturing that Laurel, no doubt refining their ability in anticipation of what was to come just several decades later on their own soil. How I wish I had more details not only about my father’s relatively easy [sic] escape from Malatya, an idyllic agricultural area in central Eastern Turkey hard by the Euphrates’ headwaters but also about his path in the first couple of decades in the US. Of the four remaining siblings why was he chosen to leave with a maternal aunt in about 1912 at the age of 15? Because he was the oldest? Overland to Trebizond on the Black Sea, rowed out to a steamer with their funds stolen by the boatman, never having seen electric lights before. Did they stop anywhere prior to arriving at Ellis Island? Not a short journey. Stayed with maternal uncles, prosperous in Philadelphia in the grocery trade, for a few days, then on to Pine Grove, Pennsylvania, where Jack was already working. Lived in a company house with maybe a dozen young Armenian men, all of whom worked in the now long-gone Gensemer and Salen Tannery which Leo described as one of Dante’s lowest levels, filthy, smelly, noxious chemicals, all a few feet from their company dormitory in this isolated farming hamlet. A tormented job and existence, no Armenian food, and no females or children so essential to an Armenian household. After some unknown but short length of time he left to move in with a farming family, a period he recalls with undying affection for the kindness of this American household and of course the land-rooted existence recalling his earlier times in Armenia. The very sketchy story of the three younger ones is based almost entirely on facial expressions of anguish, intentionally suppressed recollections, hints, implications, and often, silence, and in most cases an attitude that did not even admit to their sordid history. This led to the understanding that questions would receive limited answers. All three, orphans of the streets during the early months of WWI, were taken into various Turkish households after the killing of their widower father, their mother having just died in childbirth, with the boys, George and Serge destined to serve as abused toys with the same destiny for their only sister. What a double tragedy for this fine woman, who heard in her very early years that her birth “Caused the walls to cry” because of the curse to the household of the birth of a girl and then to go on to be a Christian concubine in a Muslim household. Then miracles to follow mysteries. How their lives evolved and how they found each other and yet another sibling, Leo, would be a wondrous story if only the details were known. That was not to be for not only was it not told to others it was likely never even uttered between them despite the mirror image of their agony. Alas, all we have is a tantalizing snippet from George, also called Gamo, who was well formed but remained under five feet all his life. It is told that one evening, in the Muslim household, he overheard the intention to kill him which encouraged his escape. Where was he, where did he go, how did he survive? The same is asked of Mary and Serge. There must be more, much more. How did they contact their brother Leo in the US? How did they all manage to end up in Marseille, France, and establish themselves? How did the brothers, barely out of their teen years, illiterate, unschooled, mute in the host language, create a granary and even construct a machine to sort grain by size? Then to the US with the same quiet, undemanding demeanor, to duplicate their gratitude to their next host nation by pulling their weight and contributing to its society and economy. I never heard even the susurration of complaint about their travails, not a peep expressing the desire for others to share or understand their suffering. Never, never a word that hinted that they were victims and needed special recognition and entitlement to heal their psychic wounds. In reality they were the ones who unwittingly helped heal what might be called PTSD in others. How fortunate I was to have such nice people as my family. At no time in their lives before and after coming to the United States had they received any help from the government or even their beloved Orthodox Church, with the only succor from those in their immediate circle. Contrast this with the enormous efforts of the Catholic and Protestant missionaries during the massacres. The thought of welfare was abhorrent to them. It was this absence of expectation that caused them to be self-sufficient, always seeking the means of their survival and success by their own hand. No hand-outs and no hand-ups. Leo, is, of course, best known to me. But then he was well known to many because of his personality. He was restless, curious, interested in things but more in people, and impetuous. A business partner said of Leo, “When Leo hears the word cucumber he grabs the salt shaker”. I have not been spared some degree of impetuosity and impatience. When I hear the word cucumber I think of salt. He left a vivid impression on all who had contact with him. He was the rare person who aged well, and very well at that. He was the kind of person that I hope to have become in my old age. More tolerant and expansive, a very rare course during the end of life. He defied my definition of aging, “A contraction of one’s intellectual and physical horizons”. Never lost his affection for the underdog and had a near insane, uncritical love for children and their antics and foibles, for which he always found excuses. My siblings and I have absolutely no recollection of lecturing, admonishment, criticism, chastisement, deprivation, or physical punishment regardless of the degree of our transgression, of course passing off this responsibility to my mother whose gentleness prevented anything worse than a blow to the elbow with the heel of her shoe or slipper, which inevitably made her feel worse than we. I suspect that my brother’s and my laughing at this imitation of physical punishment comforted her with the conviction that we were unharmed. Our laughter soothed her, contrary to how many other parents might react, with more fury. This characteristic was shared in near equal measure by his siblings. I’ve always speculated that this may have been a consequence of the physical beatings and abuse experienced at the hands of his father and the school priest. However, this beneficent attitude was in abeyance when my teen-age brother George turned off all good sense with the intention to marry, against which the entire family’s warnings of inevitable catastrophe were ignored. This concern for the underdog led to some troubles which were more embarrassing than serious. The appeal of Soviet Communism came easily and as for most, of course, uncritically and from ignorance. The Armenian Apostolic Church experienced internal strife when the short-lived Republic of Armenia, 1918-1920, prior to becoming a Soviet Republic, had two Mother Houses, one in the new Armenian Republic and a competing one in Lebanon. These dual Sees continue to the present day. Surprise! This unending schism led, on Christmas Eve 1933, in the Holy Cross Church on 187th Street in Washington Heights, to the assassination of the Bishop, a virtual duplicate of the killing of Caesar, this one between the rear pews, involving nine assassins and knives. The FBI, aware of Leo’s left leaning, despite any involvement, rounded him up as a usual suspect for questioning. This episode was so embarrassing and hurtful that he would go into a rage at the hint of its being recalled. With the entry of the US into WWI in 1917 he enlisted and was a member of the fabled 4th, IVY, division, then first constituted in New York, landing at Utah Beach in WWII, and still in existence. Leo became a horse messenger out of regimental headquarters, a distinction he recalled with pride, demonstrating his horsemanship in his eighties on a Sierra pack trip. Theodore Roosevelt’s oldest son, Tad, was a Brigadier General and Medal of Honor recipient with that division on D-day and died about 6 weeks later. He was unstintingly generous, helping not only his siblings but all of my mother’s...