Seropian/Vahouni

In early September, 1923, Dr. Kegham Seropian, together with his wife, Zabelle (Vahouni) Seropian, and their soon-to-be-three-year-old daughter, Anahid, disembarked in New York, having crossed the Atlantic aboard the steamship George Washington. They arrived from Constantinople (Istanbul), by way of Marseille, France.

Born in January of 1897, Zabelle was the sole survivor of her immediate family. Her parents, Krikor and Yeranouhi Vahouni (both school teachers), together with her two older brothers, Diran and Hrant, were all killed during the first wave of the Genocide in April of 1915. Zabelle survived because she was away at school - the American School for Girls, in Sivas, Turkey - training to become a nurse.

Ten years her senior (born in 1887), Kegham received his medical degree from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. He was, at one time, personal physician to Mustafa Kemal (“Attaturk”), who was considered “the father of modern Turkey.”

Anahid was born in December of 1920, in Izmit, Turkey, and would celebrate her third birthday shortly after the family arrived in New York.

Following a brief sojourn in Whitinsville (circa 1924-1925), the family of three took up residence in Worcester, where Kegham established his medical practice; and where, in April of 1926, fraternal twin sons - Diran and Hrant (named for their murdered uncles) - were born, adding to the Seropian family.

About six years later, the Seropians - now numbering five - returned to New York, and took up residence in the Bronx, where Kegham continued his medical practice. Among his patients was a family named Keosaian.

Kegham died in September of 1955, at the age of sixty-eight, and is buried at Cedar Grove Cemetery in Flushing, Queens.

Now a widow, Zabelle moved to the Rego Park neighborhood of Queens, and went to work as a translator of Armenian and Turkish at the New York office of the FBI. She lived with her daughter and son-in-law, in Yonkers, for the last five years of her life, and died in early March of 1987. She is also buried at Cedar Grove Cemetery in Flushing, Queens.

In January of 1946, Anahid Seropian (an English Teacher ) married Edward Keosaian (a College Professor). Both are now deceased, and are survived by their three adult children - Gregory, David (JoAnn), and Marta.