From Mundane Details to Great Revelations

Taleen Babayan

 

One simple — yet key — question set into motion 30 years of research: how many Armenians were actually massacred during the Armenian Genocide?

This question was posed to Dr. Sarkis Karayan in 1971, when he was serving as chief of the American University of Beirut’s Maternal and Child Health Center, by Dr. Stanley Kerr, chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at AUB. Close friends and esteemed colleagues, Kerr was working on his soon-to-be published book Lions of Marash, which focused on the eyewitness accounts of the American Near East Relief’s efforts during the Armenian Genocide. Kerr knew that Karayan was not only Armenian, but possessed the passion for history and research that would lead him to the accurate findings.

He was right.

Karayan made this quest one of his life’s missions and after countless hours of research and decades of dedication, Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, 1914: A Geographic and Demographic Gazetteer, was recently released by the Gomidas Institute, an independent and academic institution based in London (www.gomidas.org).

Steve Kerr and the Kerr Family to Be Honored

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.