ARRIVAL: Los Angeles’ first wave of Armenian...

ARRIVAL: Los Angeles’ first wave of Armenian immigrants came from Fresno, not the Middle East. They were farmers hit hard by the Great Depression, says Barlow Der Mugrdechian of Cal State Fresno’s Armenian studies program. About 350,000 Armenians live in the area now, 45,000 of them in Glendale.

ON THE AIR: Filmmaker Sarky Mouradian started Armenian Television Productions while waiting for the Middle East to stabilize. Eighteen years later, he still runs the Van Nuys company. Mouradian’s bilingual variety show “Armenian Teletime” broadcasts Saturday and Sunday morning on KSCI-TV. Starting May 1, Armenian programming will be offered through a microwave broadcasting system.

REMEMBRANCE: In plotting his invasion of Poland, Adolf Hitler said: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” Debbie Maktarian, 93, and Beatrice Minassian, 96, do (above). Today, Armenians commemorate the massacres that began in 1915--1.5 million died and another 750,000 were driven out of Turkey. Maktarian was 17 when Turkish soldiers killed her father, uncle, two brothers and husband in Iran. “As long as human beings walk, that genocide should be remembered,” Maktarian says.

ELDER CARE: Los Angeles’ first Armenian home for the elderly opened in 1949 with 10 rooms. Three additions later, it still had a waiting list. In 1992 and 1993, the new Ararat Home opened in Mission Hills with 65 rooms and nursing home care for 99. “They are the ones who kept our existence,” director Rev. Hagon Janbazian says of the residents. “We owe it to them to give them the best care we can.”

EDUCATION: Armenian-speaking students are the largest language group in the Glendale Unified School District and the second-largest in the Los Angeles Unified School District, with 5,915 limited-English-proficiency students. The Valley area also is home to a dozen Armenian parochial schools, including ones in Canoga Park, Encino, Sherman Oaks and two in Glendale.