Golden State Warriors head coach
and six-time National Basketball Association (NBA) champion Steve Kerr
and the Kerr family will be honored with the 2016 Humanitarian
Award of the Armenian National Committee of America
Western Region (ANCA-WR) at a gala banquet on October 16, 2016 at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles. The award will be given in recognition of their exemplary work
through three generations—starting with the Near East Relief during and
after the Armenian Genocide and continuing through the present time.
Kerr’s grandparents, the late Dr. Stanley E. Kerr and his wife Elsa
Reckman Kerr, were instrumental in establishing the Near East Relief,
the unprecedented American campaign of international humanitarian
assistance which saved and sustained hundreds of thousands of Armenian
Genocide survivors from 1915-1930.
In 1919, Stanley Kerr, who was a junior officer with the United
States Medical Corps, transferred to Marash, in central Anatolia, where
he headed the American relief operations and assisted thousands of
Armenians left behind by the French. He met his wife Elsa in
Marash, where she worked as a schoolteacher. They later married in
Beirut, where they ran a Near East Relief orphanage for Armenian
children at Nahr Ibrahim, Lebanon, until it closed.
In 1925, Kerr earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, a field where
he distinguished himself, at the University of Pennsylvania and returned to Lebanon to chair the
Department of Biochemistry of the American University of Beirut (AUB), except during World War II, when the Kerrs relocated to Princeton University. Elsa Reckman Kerr was Dean of Women at AUB for a term. In 1965 Stanley retired with the rank
of Distinguished Professor and was awarded the Order of Merit from the
Republic of Lebanon.
In 1966 Dr. Antranig Chalabian, a research assistant at the Physiology Department of the AUB, discovered Dr. Kerr’s personal
notes in the attic of the department. The latter, who had moved to New Jersey after retirement, had left his notes behind assuming
that they were long lost through the years. He had also taken hitherto unpublished pictures while serving in the Near
East Relief. The result of this discovery was the publication of Dr. Stanley Kerr’s The Lions of Marash: Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief, 1919-1922 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1973), a memoir documenting his eye-witness accounts of the Armenian Genocide. He passed away in December 1976.
“I was aware of my grandparents running an orphanage in Marash and
eventually finding Beirut through their travels. I have a great deal of
pride in knowing how much they helped,” explained Coach Kerr.
The legacy of Dr. Stanley and Elsa Kerr was passed down to their
children and grandchildren, who have continued to live by the
humanitarian values of their parents and grandparents. Their oldest son
was the late Malcolm H. Kerr (1931-1984), who was born in Lebanon and
married his wife Ann Zwicker Kerr there. They became the parents to four
children, including Coach Steve Kerr and his older brother
John Kerr, who continues his grandparents’ mission by serving on the
current board of the Near East Foundation. Their daughter Susan van de
Ven used letters from her grandfather as the basis of her honors thesis in History at
Oberlin College (1980), “Letters of Stanley E. Kerr: Volunteer Work with the 'Near East Relief' among Armenians in Marash, 1919-1920.” She later presented her thesis at the Armenian Patriarchate in
Jerusalem on the occasion of the 1986 commemoration of the Armenian
Genocide.
Professor Malcolm
Kerr, a renowned scholar of Middle Eastern Studies, who served as
President of the American University of Beirut (1982-1984), became an expert on
the Lebanese Civil War and regional issues. He was tragically assassinated
by members of Islamic Jihad in 1984. His wife Ann returned to the United States and is
currently the coordinator of the Fulbright Scholar Enrichment Program at UCLA.
Growing up in Beirut surrounded by Armenian friends and colleagues of
his grandparents and great-grandparents and becoming intimately
familiar with the consequences of the Armenian Genocide have shaped
Coach Kerr’s perspective. As he describes his strong connection toward
Armenians and lamenting that not many people know about the Armenian
Genocide, Kerr says, “I feel like an honorary member of the Armenian
community through my family.”
“The Kerr family’s altruism, sacrifice, and activism with the Near
East Relief exemplifies the relentless work of the American people and
the United States to save the Armenians from annihilation during the
Armenian Genocide,” said ANCA-WR Board Member Raffi Kassabian.
No comments:
Post a Comment