“Arshag Hampartsoum Dickranian was the best grandpa in the world.
Every time I saw him we’d hug. He’d smile at me and call me “anoushig aghjig” (sweet girl in Armenian). When I was younger I’d be playing, doing the goofy things that little kids do and he would come over and play with me. Not like some grown-ups did, when you wished they would just leave you alone, but like a friend did. Archie would come over, feel behind your ear, and all of sudden you’d have a shiny quarter in your hand. Or somehow he could stuff a whole napkin in his palm and then make it disappear. Not like other magicians who never told their secrets, he would try and help you learn the tricks, and whenever you really messed it up, which was about all the time for a five-year-old, he pretended he didn’t see and let you think you were a master magician.
As I got older, he changed with me, still being my favorite grown-up. I have played soccer for 10 years now, and the older I became, the more it became part of my life. Archie played soccer when he was younger too, but I never really knew about it. I found out when I was kicking the ball around in the backyard. He came out and started to pass with me. Then I remember looking up during a game to see my grandpa cheering for me on the sidelines. When I became more advanced, he still helped me. I remember during half-time for a game that was very close, he took me aside and told me to pass the ball around more rather than just kick it. Now you have to keep in mind that Archie was 74 when I was born, so at that time he was probably about 86. You can only imagine my amazement when he did things like that.
By nature I’m quite a stubborn person. I don’t take criticism very well. Archie was one of the people I listened to 100 percent of the time. When he would frantically blow a whistle trying to get me to come close to shore in the ocean, when I was only knee high in water, I would come in. When he told me to do my homework, I did.
When I finally learned about the Armenian genocide, when the Turks killed millions of Armenians, I saw my grandfather in a whole new light. When I was ten, I was playing soccer and being a kid. When he was ten he was forced to walk miles from their house, leaving all their belongings, to the nearest train station. He and his family were crowded into box cars like cattle and transported to the Turkish city of Konya several hundred miles away from his home. Somehow Archie’s father was able to get information about what lay ahead and took his family off the train, perhaps with the help of a sympathetic Turkish soldier. They tried to convince their other relatives to follow but they would not listen. To this day, nobody has seen or heard from them which leads us to believe they died in the long death marches through the Syrian Desert.
When I was 12. I was just starting to like boys and get into MTV. When Archie was 12, he was working as a shepherd to help his family. He moved from house to house almost nightly to avoid the Turkish soldiers.
Now I am 16, into guys, soccer, music, school, and just being a teenager. When Archie was 16, he was sent to boarding school in Istanbul, Turkey, away from his family and still facing intense discrimination because he was Armenian.
When I am 18, I hope to be at a college of my choice, excited to be in the real world for the first time. When Archie was 18, he had already seen a harsh side of the real world. He had moved to Sacramento, where he went to school by day and worked in the canneries at night. His family lived in a bug-infested factory shack.
After 91 years of life, Archie accomplished so much. Instead of being bitter because of the awful experiences in his youth, he tried to help other Armenians, so nobody would ever have to go through what he did. He helped start 13 Southern California schools for children of Armenian descent, one being the Arshag Dickranian School in Los Angeles. He assisted in the creation of the chairs of Armenian studies at Harvard, Cal Berkeley and UCLA. Archie went back to Armenia to help in any way he could, by donating money, creating scholarships and encouraging the people.
My grandfather hung in his office a quote from William Saroyan, the well-known Armenian-American writer, “I should like to see any power in the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have been crumbled… and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again…”
Arshag Hampartsoum Dickranian, who died April 24, 1996, was my hero.”
