500 Mourn Family Killed in Glendale Fire

As 500 mourners faced a row of caskets at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, seven members of a family of Armenian immigrants were buried Friday while the eighth was in a county jail cell on charges of murdering them.

Six times the names of the dead were spoken in Armenian and English as a part of the funeral service. And six times a wave of sobbing rolled through the cemetery’s Hall of Liberty as the roll call of grief progressed.

The children--Robina, Rita, Ronika, Rodric, Romik and Roland--were ages 6 to 17, and their mother, Turan, was 37.

“We don’t know why sometimes God calls to himself . . . a child who is 8, or a man who is 18, or a man who is 90,” said Archbishop Yeprem Tabakian of St. Mary’s Armenian Apostolic Church in Glendale, who delivered the eulogy.

“But we have faith that he knows what he’s doing. There are so many things in this life that we cannot explain, but which we accept with our faith.”

Jorjik Avanesian, 40, Turan’s husband and the father of the children, pleaded not guilty to seven charges of murder on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, although Glendale police said he admitted setting the apartment fire that killed his family. It was the culmination of a years-long dispute with his wife, they said.

Many in the Armenian immigrant community have been seeking meaning in the tragedy, but two weeks after the seven bodies were found in the charred rubble of the one-bedroom apartment in Glendale, social workers, priests, professors and schoolteachers could only quote Scripture and express sorrow at the funeral.

Few in the crowd of mourners seemed to know the victims well, apparently because they had just arrived in the United States in October, after earlier fleeing their native Iran for Turkey.

But that did not stop an outpouring of emotion.

“You say to yourself, why did this happen? Why? Why? But there are no answers,” said Glendale Councilman Larry Zarian. “Perhaps instead of seeking answers, we should seek solutions to make sure this never happens again.”

Mourners Friday comforted themselves with their religious belief that the departed are merely nenchetsyal--Armenian for “those who have fallen asleep.”

Friends of Robina, 17, a Glendale High School senior, recalled her bright smile and eagerness to learn.

“Robina just absorbed everything we could give her,” said Virginia Bird, her U.S. history teacher.

“She was doing everything to do her best--always ready to help others,” said pallbearer David Isahakian.

Many mourners did not know the Avanesian family but said they came to the funeral to pay their respects.

A USC professor who grieved with the family said the Armenian community needs to reexamine itself and try to help recent immigrants ease the stress of adjusting to life in the United States.

“It is up to us to do more to try to prevent this kind of tragedy,” said Richard Dekmejian, who teaches politics.

On each of the seven caskets a name was written in gold script in English and in Armenian. The girls’ caskets were covered with pink carnations, the boys’ with blue carnations, and the mother’s with red and white roses.

In the long history of the cemetery, never had seven people been buried together at the same time. The task took more than three hours, stretching into dusk.

At the end, only Maro Ovanesyan, a sister of the man jailed for the deaths, and her 72-year-old mother, Tuti Avanesian, were left.

According to a priest, both repeated in Armenian: “This is unbearable. How can I go on living?”

Their chanting stopped when the mother of the children--known as Susana in America--was lowered into the ground last.

“We can only say they’re now in the hands of God,” Dekmejian said, “and we have to have faith that they’ll be rewarded in the afterlife.”

Times correspondent Susan Abram contributed to this story.