Armenian genocide anniversary stirs memories for descendants in S.C. (+ video)

The words, written in a two-page typed history, shed light on why the Armenian grandfather of Columbia’s Candy Waites and David Yaghjian moved his family to the Rhode Island, fleeing hostilities toward Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the early part of the 20th century.

Some South Carolinians of Armenian descent are remembering the deportation and exile of their ancestors from president-day Turkey 100 years ago.That history, commemorated on April 24, has been the source of creativity and activism in some Palmetto State residents and, in others, the desire for a deeper knowledge of their ancestors. About 1,150 South Carolinians claim Armenian ancestry, according to U.S. Census data.  Report Thestate

Columbia attorney Dick Harpootlian said his grandfather and grandmother came to the United States from a town called Harput, fleeing massacres there in the early part of the century.

Having grown up hearing that history might have contributed to him becoming politically active, the former S.C. Democratic Party chairman said.

In Greenville, Haro Setian and his wife, Mariam Matossian, remembered stories of their grandparents’ deportation from their homeland. Their grandparents survived the often deadly march across the desert to Lebanon and Syria where they were orphaned.

But getting those details has sometimes been a challenge.

“So much of it was, ‘Forget and move on,’ a coping mechanism,” Setian said.

‘A crime … supposed to be recognized’

The Armenian genocide – called so by historians, more than 20 countries and 43 U.S. states, including South Carolina – spanned between 1915 and 1923.

Tensions between Turks and Armenians, the Christian minority, rose as the Ottoman Empire fell into decline, and Armenians sought more rights and protections, according to the Armenian National Institute.

While hostilities toward Armenians started earlier, the Turkish government of the Ottoman Empire began in 1915 to arrest, expel and kill Armenian leaders. Up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed, according to estimates.

A century later, some Armenians are troubled by the reluctance of some world leaders – including President Barack Obama – to use the word “genocide” when describing the actions of the Turks, now critical allies for the United States.

Aram Heboyan, who just moved from New York to Myrtle Beach, said there’s no other way to describe what his grandmother, then 7 years old, witnessed in 1915.

Warned that the Turks were coming, she hid in tall grass and watched as Turkish soldiers marched women, children and elderly villagers, including members of her family, into a circle where they were slain.

“She saw her mother in that group, but she couldn’t say a word, because someone would know they they were there and would kill them too,” Heboyan said.

World leaders, he said, must use the word “genocide” because what happened to Armenians was not incidental deaths during a time of war, but planned out by the government.

“They’ve been using ‘massacres,’ ‘killings,’ whatever, but not ‘genocide,’ ” Heboyan said. “That’s a crime, and it’s supposed to be recognized.”

‘Bitter about having to leave’

Harpootlian said Obama’s reluctance to use the word “genocide” does not mean Americans are “forgetting history. We know what happened. The Turks know what happened.”

“I’m not as vehement about the recognition of the genocide by the Turks as I am about the recognition that nobody, no nation should be allowed to systematically eliminate a population,” Harpootlian said.

Harpootlian said both his grandfather and grandmother moved from Harput in Turkey to the United States in the early 1900s, when massacres of Armenians were taking place before 1915. His grandfather went from New York City to Fresno, Calif., where he met his wife. The two returned to New York, where Harpootlian’s father grew up.

Harpootlian was born in New York, but was raised in Charlotte. Later, he went to college at Clemson University and the University of South Carolina law school.

The massacres and the family’s flight were topics of conversation at family gatherings, Harpootlian said, recalling as a boy hearing the family elders talking around the table at Thanksgiving or Christmas.

“My relatives were wealthy merchants, college educated, lived in a sophisticated town that had a college,” he said, adding “they were bitter about having to leave very good economic positions.”

History alive in song

An Armenian folk singer, Matossian of Greenville said her ancestors’ painful history is a source of creativity for her.

Named after her grandmother – one of three grandparents who survived the genocide – Matossian grew up in an Armenian community in Vancouver, British Columbia, where at first she did not understand the tearful gatherings each year in April.

She also did not understand why some children did not know she was Armenian and decided to commit herself to “making sure people know who we are.”

Folk music provides her with a “beautiful vehicle” to share Armenia’s history with non-Armenian audiences. The songs also help her maintain a bond with Armenia and her grandmother who sang the same songs but died before she was born.

The best part about performing the songs, she said, is when audience members talk to her after a concert or write to her and say, “I didn’t know this story.”

“What I love even more is when they go home and do their own research and say, ‘I found all this stuff out.’

“That is the part I’m playing.”

‘No justice for Armenians’

A decade ago, Waites, a former state legislator from Columbia, went to Ellis Island and found the passenger manifest from the French ship that carried her grandmother and father across the Atlantic Ocean in 1907.

Waites’ grandfather already had made the crossing, settling in Providence, R.I., a town whose name held promise.

In the late 19th century in the Ottoman Empire, the Yaghjian family was “a reputable and wealthy clan” that lost its strong ties with Turkish leaders in the late 1890s as hostilities toward the Christian minority increased.

The history recalled two incidents illustrating mounting tensions between Turks and Armenians.

In 1895, Samuel Yaghjian intervened to stop Turkish soldiers from beating an Armenian shepherd.

The following year, a mob of Turks came to the home apparently to kill the family and plunder the house. The family defended themselves by throwing stones from the roof.

Yaghjian, with his rifle, “started to fire on the mob with colorful swearing,” which surprised the mob, later broken up by the arrival of soldiers.

Later, Samuel was arrested for treason but released under pressure from European embassies. Still, “something was missing in him,” the relative wrote.

“He was a rebellious person,” but “came to the conclusion that there was no justice for Armenians in Turkey” and moved his family to the United States.

‘So many things I don’t know’

Waites’ father, Edmund Yaghjian, grew up working in his father’s grocery store in Providence when a customer noticed the beautiful drawings he was making on the grocery bags and arranged for him to get a scholarship to the Rhode Island School of Design.

Yaghjian’s career carried him to New York City, where he taught art and met his wife, a student at the time. The couple then moved to Columbia, Mo., before coming to the Palmetto State, where Edmund Yaghjian led USC’s art department.

Waites and her brother David Yaghjian, like his father, an artist, said their parents seldom talked about Armenia.

Visits to their grandparents’ home in Rhode Island yielded feasts that included Armenian food, but no details about their lives – at least not any told in English.

Waites’ father never made art about Armenia except for two paintings: a family portrait and a monastery in Armenia, nestled in an idyllic landscape.

Waites wonders if the two paintings, which deviate greatly from the more modernist paintings he made of scenes in New York City and Columbia, were a sign that he was searching for something in his past, “thinking about his roots.”

Not knowing for sure has driven Waites to realizations of her own.

“If your parents are still alive, for God’s sake, talk to them and find out your history. We never ask the questions, and then suddenly they’re gone.

“There’s so many things I don’t know about my parents’ history.”