Armenian Reporter:

The Cathedral: How it all began

Published: Saturday July 25, 2009

Reading the original story and the subsequent letters regarding St. Vartan's Cathedral, I was at first bemused; then I became a bit angry. I was reminded of what Count Ciano (those of a certain age will know who he was) is reported to have said: "Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan." I would like to paraphrase it by saying: "Success has a hundred fathers, but failure is an orphan."

I am referring to all the people who are credited with the success of the fund drive that resulted in St Vartan's Cathedral.

During the 1940s, the Diocese had a long-running fund-raising drive to erect a diocesan center and a cathedral. To say that the fund was a failure is an understatement. Each major announcement of the beginning of a drive resulted in a few pennies.

Then, the Diarbekirian Brothers moved their worldwide headquarters from Milan to New York, taking over the former Liberty Magazine Building, on 57th Street, renaming it the Vogar Building (the name of their organization).

What irritated me was that the Diarbekirians were virtually ignored with an almost toss-away inclusion in one sentence in your initial report.

What actually happened was that my mother wrote about the Diarbekirians (her brother had married a Diarbekirian sister). In my father's newspaper, Groong, she wrote about the family and indicated that wherever they had operations, they built churches in honor of their parents.

Archbishop Nersoyan and Haig Kavookjian, reading the story, called Sarkis, the oldest brother, and made an appointment to visit him in his Rye, N.Y., mansion. With a copy of Groong, they went, referred to the story, explained the reason for their visit, and indicated how much they were seeking.

Sarkis said, "All right."

"All right, what?" they asked.

"I will donate the money."

"How much?"

"All of it. Isn't that why you are here?"

Sarkis gave the surprised pair $300,000. Eventually, he was to give $55,000 more.

Sarkis wrote to his then-widowed sister, telling her the entire story - the telephone call, the visit, the conversation, the pledge - and said, referring to my mother: "Because of her pen, I had to use my pen to write a check for $300,000."

The money raised, the decision was made to erect the Diocesan Center first.

It took newcomers to New York and America to satisfy the project's initial objective.

An amusing sidelight to the story is that when the committee decided to unveil the design of the center to the Armenian Community, at a church in Long Island, guess who weren't invited? Mrs. Kevorkian, who wrote the story, and Mr. Kevorkian, publisher/editor of Groong. After all, to have done so would have meant explaining how the funds were raised in one fell swoop.

Uninvited, they went nonetheless. To put it mildly, neither Nersoyan nor Kavookjian enjoyed his dinner.

But, that's another story.

Very truly yours,
Andrew Kevorkian
Philadelphia

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