Massachusetts Armenians: A Community in Mourning

By Mary Barrett

On Wednesday, Dec. 7, 1988, a catastrophic earthquake rumbled through the Soviet Armenian Republic, killing an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 people.

On the same day, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was touring New York City and preparing to deliver one of the most momentous speeches in the history of the UN General Assembly. The only other US media coverage relative to the USSR at the time was of clashes in Azerbaijan resulting in the flight of 150,000 ethnic Armenians to cities in Soviet Armenia.

When aides to President Gorbachev hinted that he might have to cancel the rest of his trip and return home in response to an earthquake, US journalists were incredulous. On "Nightline," which was devoted to Gorbachev's astonishing proposal for a significant Soviet arms reduction, host Ted Koppel implied that the rush home might be to forestall a rebellion against his policies among generals in Moscow.

Skepticism Turns Into Horror

By Thursday morning, however, such skepticism had ended. Horrified Armenians around the world were clinging to their radios. In Watertown, a Massachusetts city with a large Armenian population, people had been on the phone all night trying, without success, to reach relatives. As the first television pictures of devastated Leninakan and Spitak were relayed to the West, it became clear that a disaster of major proportions had occurred. Since Armenians in the US are well-linked through religious, cultural, and social organizations, local communities went into high gear immediately.

Breaking previous policy, Soviet officials identified their needs, and the Soviet government permitted foreign airplanes with needed supplies and relief workers to land at the Armenian capital of Yerevan. Rescue and media parties set up satellite links in Leninakan and elsewhere, and in the absence of a functioning telephone system, ham radio operators in the US set up direct communications with their Soviet counterparts to assist families in the United States in determining the fate of relatives in the quake area.

Touched by Tragedy

Of 50,000 Armenians in greater Boston, the second largest community in the country, none were untouched by the tragedy. The doors of many Armenian churches were draped in black. Armenian papers, several of which are published locally, were filled with details of the catastrophe and of relief efforts.

Numerous groups and individuals inside and outside the Armenian community contributed both time and money to those efforts. The Rev. Vartan Hartunian of the First Armenian Church of Belmont called this generosity overwhelming and noted that the response of the Jewish community and of both Arab-American groups and individuals was particularly extensive and timely.

The Armenian and other Middle Eastern communities in the Boston area have always overlapped. Sharing ethnic and cultural similarities, they buy food in the same grocery stores, eat in the same restaurants, and enjoy one another's music and dance. Many Armenian Americans trace their origins not only to the original Armenian homelands in Turkey and the Soviet Union, but also to Armenian diaspora communities in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, as well as an ancient representation in the Old City of Jerusalem, where they view themselves as Palestinians of Armenian descent.

A major fund-raising drive in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, under the direction of Cardinal Bernard Law, yielded a remarkable $400,000.

Such diverse Cambridge entities as the oft-picketed and top-secret Draper lab, and the Coalition for Palestinian Rights, a group of about a dozen Arab-American peace and solidarity groups, also contributed money.

In Cambridge, a special relationship with Soviet Armenia was already in place at the time of the catastrophe. Two-and-a-half years ago, Cambridge and the Soviet capital of Yerevan became sister cities. Since that time the two cities have exchanged visits by business people, architects, doctors, archaeologists, physicists, and environmentalists. Even the Cambridge High School Jazz Band has performed in Yerevan. The prior existence of these cooperative ties also proved to be invaluable. As a "nonsectarian" group with US, Soviet, and Armenian contacts, the Cambridge Yerevan association's fund-raising drive attracted generous contributions. The association conducted a six-hour telethon on Cambridge Cable Television one week after the earthquake, netting $11,000. By the first week in January it had raised a total of nearly $50,000 from local schools, businesses, and individuals.

Sending Help and Supplies

One member of the association, Dr. David Bor, director of residency training at Cambridge City Hospital, who spent two weeks in Soviet Armenia in May 1988, recommended that American well-wishers take the lead from doctors in Armenia and not rush in with gifts of material that are not determined to be part of an overall integrated system.

Since the earthquake, the Cambridge-Yerevan Sister City Association has sent supplies to Armenia through the non-sectarian, non-profit Medical Outreach for Armenians. Dr. Carolanne Najarian said that it was one of the first US groups to have representatives in Armenia after the disaster. According to her, Dr. Vartkes Najarian, founder of Medical Outreach, and Dr. Garo Tertzagian and Dr. Robert Gale arrived in Yerevan only two days after the quake, hitching a ride on a US government-sponsored flight.

The purpose of the 10-day tour was to ascertain the medical problems in Armenia and evaluate the ability of local institutions to deal with them. Having discovered most hospitals and clinics destroyed along with their equipment, materials, and medications, it was necessary to assess long term as well as current needs in the stricken area.

Dr. Najarian, who is one of five members nationwide of the volunteer organization, said the local office of Medical Outreach has been working night and day with the help of numerous people who simply walked in and offered to assist. Nationally, the organization has received between $5 and $7 million dollars worth of medical donations. Dr. Najarian left Boston's Logan airport Jan. 2 with 100,000 pounds of medical equipment, in addition to clothing, blankets, and cots.

Arad Demirjian, a local pharmacist, who returned to Boston after serving on a volunteer medical team which traveled from one Soviet medical institution to another organizing, sorting, and identifying the vast supplies which had been flown from the US and elsewhere to Yerevan, also recommended that pharmaceutical houses, manufacturers, and volunteers work through Medical Outreach for Armenians, the only coordinating medical effort in place.

Yerevan , in a valley, was spared from destruction. It was the cities and villages in the mountainous regions that were torn apart by shifting at the Anatolian fault. Leninakan, a large, modern city of 290,000 close to the Turkish border, was three-quarters destroyed. To its east, and higher in the mountains, Spitak was entirely destroyed, leaving 30,000 homeless. Still farther east, Kirovakan, with a population of 150,000, was 50 percent destroyed. In addition to the dead in these and other areas, there are 514,000 homeless, 130,000 injured, 58 villages leveled, and 100 damaged according to a local publication, the Armenian Weekly.

Mary Barrett is a free-lance photojournalist based in Boston. She is currently completing a book entitled View From Below: Palestinian Stories of Occupation and Rebellion.