More Elbow Room : New Church Source of Pride for Armenians

When Larry Zarian’s family moved to Glendale in the early 1950s, there were, he recalled, about 10 Armenian families in town. “When I went to high school, many of my friends did not even know what an Armenian was,” said Zarian, who is now a Glendale city councilman.

Through the ‘60s and ‘70s, increasing numbers of Armenian families moved to the Glendale area, attracted by the quiet neighborhoods and good schools and by relatives and friends who had preceded them. By 1975, there were about 2,000 Armenians, enough to warrant the founding of their own church, St. Mary’s Armenian Apostolic Church, in what had been a small Protestant church on East Carlton Drive.

Then, trouble exploded in the Mideast and a new wave of Armenians began leaving Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon in large numbers for the security of America, and California in particular. The Armenian population in the Glendale area increased tenfold in the past decade, bringing with it a boom in Armenian cultural, educational and political organizations based in the city.

Neighbors’ Complaints

And, of course, with the Apostolic Church a center for community life, St. Mary’s 200-seat church and 10-car parking lot soon became crowded. Neighbors began to complain about parishioners double-parking and making the sidewalks a de facto Armenian community center on Sundays.

The little one-story, nondescript building tucked onto a side street was no longer fitting for what had become a large and prosperous community. “It was too small, too small,” said Stepan Kabadaian, chairman of St. Mary’s board of trustees.

So the congregation, which includes residents of Burbank, Sunland-Tujunga and northeast Los Angeles, last year began looking for a new home. Boosted by a $1-million donation from one family and other large pledges, it recently bought for $3 million an imposing 950-seat, Colonial-style church building on Central Avenue at Chestnut Street. A Christian Scientist congregation wanted to sell the building so it could consolidate with a sister congregation in northern Glendale.

Impressive Building

With its location on a main thoroughfare close to the Galleria and business district, its 200-car parking lot, its large social hall, its impressive columns and staircase and its prominent sign in Armenian and English, the new St. Mary’s seems to announce to the world that Glendale’s Armenian community has truly arrived in style. The planned addition of a dome and a new marble altar later this year will add to that impression, church leaders hope.

“It is something to be proud of,” said Ara Terminassians, the real estate developer whose family donated $1 million to the church in memory of his late father, Vazguin, and brother, Arthur. Asked why his family made the donation, Terminassians said: “More than anything else, the church has helped us to survive as a people.”

So many Armenian-Americans from around Los Angeles County were curious about St. Mary’s that, police estimate, about 8,000 people tried to attend its unofficial opening on Easter. The result was an unprecedented Sunday traffic jam a mile long and the need for some quick reshuffling of police manpower to direct traffic, city officials said.

Formal Opening

Last Sunday, the church was formally opened with services led by Bishop Yeprem Tabakian, prelate of the Western United States of the Beirut-based branch of the Apostolic Church, who read telegrams of blessings and congratulations from the Armenian Catholicos, or pope, Kharekin II in Lebanon.

(The Armenian Apostolic Church split in a political dispute in 1933. One branch is headquartered in Soviet Armenia and the other, which includes most of the Armenian churches in the United States, in Beirut. In addition, some Armenians belong to their own Protestant denomination and some to their own branch of Catholicism under the authority of Rome).

An estimated 1,500 people attended Sunday, many standing along the walls of the wide, pale-blue sanctuary as the bishop, in his gold-colored robes, led prayers from a temporary wooden altar bedecked with a painting of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. As is traditional, a red curtain was sometimes drawn across the altar for the bishop, out of sight of the congregation, to prepare the bread and wine for Communion. A choir sang and parishioners lighted candles.

In his sermon, St. Mary’s pastor, the Rev. Anoushavan Artinian, warned parishioners not to antagonize their new neighbors with noise, litter and illegal parking. He said he did not want a repetition of complaints generated on Carlton Drive.

Meanwhile, in the lobby and on the portico, a continuous crowd of more than 100 chatted with friends and relatives. And on the sidewalk and in the parking lot, pamphleteers handed out literature ranging from advertisements for a local travel agency to strident propaganda calling for the re-establishment of an independent Armenia, which is now divided among Turkey, the Soviet Union and Iran.

The timing for the church’s opening is particularly apt, church officials say. Next week, on April 24, Armenians will commemorate the 1.5 million countrymen they estimate to have died during World War I in massacres by the Turks or in Turkish-forced deportation marches to camps in the Syrian desert. It is the 70th anniversary of what Armenians consider to be the first genocide of the 20th Century, an event still reverberating with revenge assassinations of Turks by Armenian terrorist groups worldwide.

Eye on Future

Although it is very important to honor the Armenians victims of the past, Kabadaian said, it is just as important to make sure the culture survives in the future. “That’s why the Armenian people are builders. They build churches, clubs and schools,” he said. The Turks, he said, brought on the so-called Red Massacre, but total assimilation is a “White Massacre” that can be just as threatening to the Armenian people’s survival.

That is why St. Mary’s intends to keep its building on East Carlton Drive and use it to expand its preschool nursery program, he said. And that is why the congregation runs the Vahan and Anoush Chamlian Armenian school in La Crescenta, where 450 students attend bilingual classes through the eighth grade.

That is also why he expects no problem in fulfilling the contract to pay the Christian Scientists the full $3 million within three years. Besides the $1 million from the Terminassians family, $50,000 has been pledged by each of 19 individuals who have agreed to become so-called godfathers to the church. Other large donations also have been promised. There is no mortgage on the church because “after 30 years, I will not be here. I hope to be going to God,” said Kabadaian, who moved from Lebanon in 1967 and now owns a jewelry business in downtown Los Angeles.

Changes Planned

Church officials say that the building’s somewhat austere interior design needs some changes to reflect Armenian traditions. They have ordered a $120,000 marble altar from Italy. Plans are being drawn for a $500,000 dome and there is talk of replacing the plain-glass windows with stained-glass tableaux.

Some church members have complained privately that the money might better be spent on school programs or social services, especially to help Soviet Armenians, who usually come to America with little money.

But those complaints have a built-in fallacy, said Krikor Shenian, publisher and managing editor of Nor Gyank (New Life), a Glendale-based weekly newspaper that carries articles in both Armenian and English. “There are some people who give money only for the church and some who give only to schools. You can be quite sure that if the church people do not give to the church, they will not give to another purpose.”

Contagious Enthusiasm

Plus, the publisher said, Kabadaian’s enthusiasm is contagious. “He can persuade anyone to give money,” Shenian said.

The multiplicity of Armenian interests is reflected in Glendale, which Shenian said is “becoming more and more the center of community, cultural, social and church affairs in Southern California.” As confirmation of that, he said he expects Tabakian to move his office from the Los Feliz district to St. Mary’s. That would give St. Mary’s special prestige over the three other Armenian Apostolic churches in the Los Angeles area, he said. A spokesman for the bishop, however, said no decision has been made on such a move.

All that represents a great change from the days when Zarian was in school. He said the growth of local Armenian schools and churches “in leaps and bounds” has made it easier for young people to maintain their cultural heritage while participating fully in American civic life.

“You don’t have to choose one or the other,” Zarian said. “And for that, we are thankful to this country.”