Sons Get Soviet Visas : Two Fathers’ Dreams Close to Realization

Avedis Madjarian of Hollywood and Vitas Sakalauskas of Costa Mesa have never met, but they have a lot in common.

Both men are emigres from the Soviet Union; both have sons still living there; both have been trying for years to get them out; both learned last week that the long wait may be over.

And both can’t quite believe it.

“I will believe,” Madjarian said, “when I see him come in the door.”

“I am happy, yes--but I wait until he comes home,” Sakalauskas said.

The two fathers’ caution is understandable. Madjarian, 62, has seen the Soviet government reject nine applications for his son’s exit visa. Sakalauskas, 71, said he never even had a response to the visa applications he filed for his son every year since 1978.

So news from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Soviet Affairs that their sons’ visas had finally been approved as part of a “divided families” pact announced in Switzerland last week brought a reaction of joy mixed with apprehension.

Madjarian got the news at home. “They called me on the telephone and said, ‘Mr. Madjarian, we have good news for you,’ ” he recalled.

Sakalauskas’ wife, Susan, also got the news by telephone at home. “They start telling me that application and exit visa was granted,” she said. “Oh, I was so excited I couldn’t listen to the end.”

Her husband heard it on his car radio.

“In my heart,” he said, “was something like-- ‘ay-ya, ay-ya, ay-ya!’ I come on home. She (Susan) says, ‘I have news.’ I say, ‘Maybe same news I hear?’ She says, ‘Yes!’ ”

For both men, there were tears and laughter and confusion. And memories. . . .

Madjarian was born in Lebanon, but his family moved back to their homeland in Soviet Armenia after World War II, where he married and his son, Kevork, was born. He came to the United States after losing a leg in an accident 15 years ago--and has been trying to get his 34-year-old son; daughter-in-law, and 11-year-old granddaughter out ever since.

“I am still not believing it,” he said. “But if it does happen, it will be like magic.”

Sakalauskas is Lithuanian and became separated from his son, Theodor, when the Germans sent him to a slave-labor camp in Austria during World War II. His last memory is of the little boy “kicking his feet, crying, ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ ” The elder Sakalauskas escaped from the camp, enlisted in the British army, came to the United States after the war, had a successful career as a structural engineer, and moved to Costa Mesa in 1973.

In 1978, he managed to visit his son, who is now 48, in Lithuania, a part of the Soviet Union.

His granddaughter, Aida, had not been told he was coming. But, “When I come in,” he said, “Aida was playing with another small girl. She run to me and she say, ‘You must come for me--you from America!’ She was jumping, start kissing me.”

For the rest of the visit, Sakalauskas said, he and his son talked each day “to 3 or 4 in the morning” trying to catch up on all the lost years.

And when he came back to the United States, Sakalauskas, like Madjarian, kept in touch by letters and pictures--and by hope.

Both men had enlisted the aid of the famous and powerful.

Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein and six other big-city mayors wrote to Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev last year asking his help in reuniting 50 divided families--Madjarian’s among them--and a press aide said Feinstein spoke to Gorbachev about the matter during a visit to Moscow last December.

The Rev. Billy Graham, U.S. Sen Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach) all had made personal appeals on behalf of Sakalauskas’ family, and Badham said he had correspondence in the matter dating to 1982 and had written personally to Gorbachev on the matter May 6.

“Now,” he said, “lo and behold, apparently . . . someone over there saw the light.”

But no one could claim personal credit for the sudden opening of the door.

On grounds of protecting the privacy of individuals, the State Department declined to discuss circumstances or negotiations, except to say that these were among 117 exit visas granted to permit Soviet citizens to join relatives under the so-called “divided families” pact.

Not that the happy fathers seemed to care.

Madjarian said he did not ask his State Department caller why the visa had finally been granted after all the earlier rejections. “In the Soviet Union,” he said, “you don’t ask why.” In fact, he said, he was so excited at the news that he forgot to ask just when his son would arrive and whether his daughter-in-law and granddaughter would be coming, too.

And apprehensions remained.

“Something could go wrong,” Sakalauskas said. “I am happy, yes. But I wait until he comes home.”

“I feel now like I am in a dream,” Madjarian said. “I am not sure they will come. I will believe when they come to the door. But when they do that . . . I will make a party!”