Thousand Oaks, Armenian City May Form Sister City Tie

A link forged by a natural disaster nearly two years ago may turn into a cultural partnership between the city of Thousand Oaks and an Armenian community on the opposite side of the world.

Spitak, a community of about 30,000 about 75 miles northwest of the Armenian capital of Yerevan, was devastated Dec. 7, 1988, when an earthquake hit Armenia.

Thousand Oaks residents, many of them Armenians, responded by establishing a fund that sent medical aid to the city nearly 9,000 miles away.

Now, the Armenian town could become a sister city of Thousand Oaks, population 106,000, if a vocal group of residents are successful in establishing sister-cityhood with Spitak (pronounced spee-tok ).

J. Michael Hagopian, an Armenian-born documentary filmmaker from Thousand Oaks, visited Spitak last year and brought film footage of its devastation back to his hometown.

Spitak, a suburban community surrounded by rolling hills, reminded Hagopian and others of Thousand Oaks, he said.

“I suggested it as a sister city just by the fact that it was the epicenter of the earthquake,” Hagopian said.

Since then, support for the sister-city tie with Spitak has grown. Many of the 400 members of the ethnic Armenian community in Thousand Oaks, as well as civic leaders, have lobbied for the partnership, said Frances Prince, who chairs the city’s sister-city committee.

Prince, who is not Armenian, said the 35-member committee pushing for the sister-city link is composed of Armenians and non-Armenians. Gov. George Deukmejian, probably the state’s best-known resident of Armenian descent, narrated one of Hagopian’s documentaries.

The City Council earlier this week unanimously agreed to apply for the sister-city relationship with Spitak through the Alexandria, Va.-based Sister City International, which serves as a go-between for municipalities who seek to forge international links.

Dick Oakland, director of member services for the organization, said there are 32 U.S.-Soviet sister cities, but only one American city has international ties with Armenia.

Cambridge, Mass., established links with Yerevan nearly two years ago. Thousand Oaks has no competition from any other U.S. city for Spitak, but the organization must seek permission from Soviet officials to establish the sister-city link, Oakland said.

Bureaucratic tie-ups in Moscow could delay the process for up to two years, he said.

In the meantime, “It’s a courting period,” Oakland said. “They’ll send materials back and forth and look each other over.”

While Thousand Oaks is not assured of the link with Spitak, much of the groundwork needed to bring the two cities together has been completed, Oakland said. Hagopian’s aggressive pursuit of sister cityhood has already speeded the process of establishing international links with Armenia. Through Hagopian, Thousand Oaks Mayor Alex Fiore officially exchanged photographs and cultural and economic information with Spitak’s municipal leaders last year.

In January, 1989, Yerevan’s deputy mayor toured Thousand Oaks with a group of city officials. Hagopian hopes that Thousand Oaks officials will send a delegation to Spitak next spring.

Sister-city partnerships typically involve symbolic gestures of friendships, such as educational, cultural exchange and pen-pal programs, but local officials say it is unlikely that Thousand Oaks will establish substantial economic trade with Armenia.

Those ties are more likely to be emotional, Prince said. In the wake of reforms in the Soviet Union, some people are very interested in creating closer ties with communist nations.

“There’s an emotional appeal because of what is happening politically in the world, and in Eastern Europe in general,” Prince said.

But Hagopian said he also envisions a mini-Peace Corps program that would allow Thousand Oaks residents to help restore devastated facilities in areas hardest hit by the quake. Not everything he hopes for may be accomplished, he added.

Some civic or cultural groups that tour Thousand Oaks may be from Yerevan rather than Spitak because the city is too small to afford a symphony or dance troupes.

“In some ways it’s an unequal marriage” between the two cities, Hagopian said. “One is small, the other’s big. One is rich, the other’s not. But I think it will all work out in the long run.”