* Arpiar Missakian; Survivor of Armenian Genocide

Arpiar Missakian, 106, Glendale resident believed to have been the oldest Marine veteran who also was one of the last living survivors of the Armenian genocide of 1915-17. Missakian joined the Marines in 1921, the same year he became an American citizen. He spent much of his time in the Marines as a rifle instructor before ending his service in 1924 and returning to the Armenian town of Kessab (now part of Syria) where he was born. He remained in Kessab until 1946, when he returned to the United States. He eventually settled in Los Angeles, where he worked for a metal-plating company, retiring when he was about 70. When he was 103 he was featured in a 1997 article in Marines magazine, which could not find a living ex-Marine older than Missakian. Born in 1894, he and his family were deported from Kessab by the Young Turk government in 1915 and taken under armed guard to a huge outdoor camp at Meskene on the Euphrates River. His memories of that place remained vivid until the end of his life. He told interviewers with the Glendale-based Genocide Project that Meskene was a “horrible, horrible place” where 60,000 Armenians slain by the Turks were buried. “When a sandstorm hit, it would blow away a lot of sand and uncover those remains,” said Missakian, whose account was published in the Los Angeles Times magazine last year. “Bones, bones, bones were everywhere then. Wherever you looked, wherever you walked.” His health remained strong enough for him to live on his own with little outside assistance until he was almost 105. On Nov. 26 at his Glendale home.