County Armenians ‘Wait and Pray’

Far from the destruction of the earthquake that leveled much of northwestern Armenia, aftershocks were felt Thursday in Orange County, where Armenian immigrants and Americans of Armenian descent mourned the dead and collected aid for the survivors.

“Nobody knows anything about their relatives,” said Father L.A. Armenians tried to help quake victims.

Moushegh Mardirossian, a priest at the Armenian Apostolic Church of Orange County-Forty Martyrs. “We wait and pray and send as much help as we can.”

A relief fund was started Thursday at the Santa Ana church, an Eastern Orthodox spiritual and cultural center for the estimated 10,000 Armenians in Orange County. Prominent local Armenians, including Dr. Garo Tertzarkian, a Cowan Heights surgeon, were seeking Soviet permission to transport medicine, clothing and other emergency aid to the quake site, where the Soviet government has received preliminary estimates that up to 50,000 people were killed.

At a special requiem service, schoolchildren lit candles in memory of those killed. Incense and mournful Armenian hymns filled the air at the afternoon prayer service for about 100 youngsters who attend class at the church’s school.

The children, who had been whispering and giggling and nudging classmates moments before, grew somber as Mardirossian described young victims of the quake.

“Yesterday your brothers and sisters were studying in schools in Armenia, and suddenly disaster struck,” he said in Armenian. “The walls of their schools shook, and they were left under the rubble and killed. And not only the children but also their mothers and fathers. You can’t come close to imagining how many people were killed.”

Although they were safely half a world away, the scene was very real for these youngsters. A kindergarten class, asked to color pictures of the quake, drew stick figures lying prone or crying and buildings reduced to crooked blocks.

“The children are very affected by the earthquake,” said Lillie Marigian, principal of the school. “It is a tragedy, but they understand that we are a people that has overcome many tragedies.”

Armenians throughout the United States and particularly in Southern California, where more than 250,000 live, united to aid the ancient homeland whose national identity has not dimmed, even though it has not been a sovereign country for 70 years. Wednesday’s earthquake measured 6.9, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

“I don’t have any blood relatives there, but every Armenian is my brother,” said Tertzarkian, who was born in Lebanon to immigrant parents. “Armenians feel great patriotism because wherever they live in the world, they are not there by choice. They were forcibly deported and kicked out of their homeland.”

Tertzarkian, who traveled to Soviet Armenia in September to teach surgical techniques to doctors there, hopes to return with emergency supplies this weekend aboard a jet loaned by a wealthy East Coast Armenian.

Several other U.S. physicians have also volunteered their skills to help the injured.

L. A. Armenians tried to help quake victims. Part I, Page 13.