Charles Garabedian

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Transcription

00:08
Gregory Jundanian (GJ): Charles Garabedian.
00:09
Charles Garabedian (CG): That’s me.
00:10
GJ: Being interviewed here by Greg Jundanian. It’s May 4th or 5th.
00:15
CG: Today's May 4^th, 2023.
00:17
GJ: May 4th, 2023.
00:18
CG: A.D.
00:19
GJ: A.D.
00:20 - 01:17
GJ: And we're here to interview you as part of the Armenians of Whitinsville Oral History Project. And also your oral history will sit with the University of Southern California in the archives that Richard  Hovannisian started some time ago, that he has for research purposes only. So basically I don't have a format to go through, but essentially what I'm trying to get at with these interviews is have an understanding of who the people we're interviewing are, you know, because of their Armenian heritage. In other words, why are you who you are today because of your heritage. And we'll get into that as the interview goes on. But essentially, I think it's probably always a good place to start with the origin story. Kind of, tell us a little bit about your, how your ancestors came to Whitinsville and then we can take it from there. Is that fair?
01:17
CG: That sounds like a very logical approach to me, Greg.
01:20
GJ: Okay.
01:21 - 03:02
CG: There's a lot to be said about that.  And much of what virtually everything of what I have to tell you has come to me by word of mouth from when I was very young. And I can remember back until, let’s say, well, I was four years old and I was born in 1943. So that gives you a perspective as to what period of time I grew up in and what this country was like and what that society was like, what was going on in the rest of the world. So I was born in the middle of World War II -- 1947.  Actually I was four years old, and I didn’t have memory of different things occurring in our family. I have a very strong memory of my mother's father, my grandfather, on my mother's side, passing away. And we went down to Newton Upper Falls and they had the reception, the wake was in the house. And I can distinctly remember them taking the casket out of the house through a window because it did not fit through a door. And we went to the church. And from there, the services, I have a very strong memory of that. And I was so afraid of all these people coming together. And so many of them were crying, including my parents. I just did everything to hold on to my father's hand. I don’t think I let it go one time during all of that for just fear. I didn't know what death was, and that was my first encounter with it.
03:02
GJ: This is your grandfather?
03:05
CG: This is my grandfather. This is my mother's father.
03:07
GJ: And what was his name?
03:08
CG: His name was Jacob Madanjian.
03:10
GJ: Madanjian, okay.
03:11 - 04:01
CG: Alright, and that was the first thing that that I think I can remember when I was a little child. I remember also there was one summer he came up to Whitinsville.  And he stayed with us a couple weeks and I can remember him taking me up Church Street and he knew other Armenians in the town and he was telling them that this is “Asee tornigus eh”, and he was saying in Armenian “this is my grandson.” And he was so proud of me and he was showing me off to the town. And I was a very shy kind of person and basically still am, but I’ve learned to overcome it. But there's a part of me that is reserved, which is good because it keeps me within a certain parameter, which I believe was necessary.
04:01
GJ:  So he knew people in town, probably because he was from Bazmashen?
04:04
CG: Because he was from Bazmashen. Although originally he was born and raised in Arapgir.
04:09
GJ: Oh, where my family's from.
04:11 - 05:04
CG: And his parents, somehow I don't know why or what the circumstances was, but they passed away early in his life. So he was adopted by his uncle, who lived in Bazmashen. And it was through there that he met my grandmother and they got married and the story was that he was working in the fields and someone came over and said to him, “Hagop Hagop egoor geneeg gah kezee hamar” which was “Jacob, come out of the fields. We have a woman for you.” And that was a story and then he said, “I got married to her”. And it was just no courtship or any type of any physical falling in love like it is here. They just got married and the rest is history, as they say.
05:05 - 05:06
GJ: And what was her maiden name?
05:06 - 05:10
CG: Her name was Annik Mouradian.
05:10  - 05:11
GJ: Mouradian, okay.
05:11 - 06:24
CG: Her father was a Mouradian, but her mother was a Garabedian. And her mother was related to my father's family. I don't know the exact relationship, but I would suspect that she probably was a cousin, probably a first cousin to my great grandfather, Garabed Garabedian, who was buried in Whitinsville Pine Grove Cemetery. And he was also known as Haji Garo. And the reason they referred to him as Haji Garo.was that he had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem at least one time. And for anybody to do that, they were looked upon as somebody very special in the society, hence the word haji. And that is an Arabic title, by the way. So that is one of the strongest memories that comes to my mind when I was young.  And then growing up in Whitinsville, all kinds of beautiful things and some maybe not so beautiful, occurred to me.
06:24  - 06:36
GJ: Let me step back, though, just for a second. So we have it on the record. Your grandfather, who made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, his name was Garabed Garabedian. What was his wife's name?
06:36 - 06:46
CG: That I don't know, because when he came to this country, his wife had already passed away. Back in Bazmashen.
06:49  - 06:58
GJ: And did they have relatives on either side that stayed there and were killed or do you know anything about that or did they all get out?
06:59 - 08:21
CG: Well, as far as I know, his son, which is my grandfather, my grandfather, Hagop Garabedian, or Jacob Garabedian. He was still in Bazmashen when his father left to come to the United States. And I figure that had to be sometime in the late 1800s, because in the Blackstone Valley News Tribune, there was a fellow by the name of Peter Hackett, who was almost like a town historian, had written an article about the Armenians of Whitinsville. And many of the Armenians went to church in the Northbridge Center Congregational Church, and in 1890 they have a list of Armenians that attended that church. And my great grandfather Garabed Garabedian, was going to church there in 1890. But the family always said that when he first came to the United States, he lived down in Boston on Shawmut Avenue, and Shawmut Avenue was the location of the Holy Trinity Armenian church.  He attended church there, they said, and that's the same Holy Trinity Armenian congregation that is now in Cambridge today, I believe it’s on Brattle Street.
08:21 - 08:23
GJ: Do you know how your great grandmother died?
08:24 - 08:33
CG: I have no idea. Nothing was ever, I don't even know if they knew it. If they did, they never said anything about it.
08:34 - 08:40
GJ: So let's continue about your memories of Whitinsville. I didn't mean to interrupt you then.  But I wanted to get everybody’s names.
08:40 - 09:52
CG: No, no, that's fine. I think there are so many things that I could tell you in my mind as I'm sitting here right now, is full of so many different ideas and concepts and visions that I still have of Whitinsville. And I think being as a young person so reserved and almost afraid to want to talk to people sometimes, especially people I didn't know and I didn't say too much, but because of that, I took in a lot. And I have memories of growing up and a lot of my friends that I went to school with, when we sit down, we sat recollecting things and I can bring back specific conversations. I remember when I was in the first or second grade there were certain things happening to my friends and they tell me, they say, “Charlie, how do you remember that?”  And they say, “I have no idea why I remember these things.” And I think part of was is that I didn't say too much, but because I wasn't talking, I had a chance to really record this with my ears and my eyes. And it has translated up here and somehow it's still, for the most part, stays with me. But going back on Whitinsville, I basically-
09:52
GJ: Where did you live in Whitinsville?
09:55 - 10:56
CG: When I was born in Whitinsville Hospital in 1943, but at that time my mother and my father were living in North Uxbridge. Before my mother and father got married in 1942, my mother, being from Newton Upper Falls, obviously had to come to Whitinsville because my dad was working in the Whitin Machine Works, but when they got married they could not find any place to rent in Whitinsville. And I think that, the reason for that was because of World War II. For some reason, rents were not available, but they managed to rent the house on Moody Street in North Uxbridge, I believe. And so my first two years of my life was there and then in 1945, they moved to Whitinsville on Church Street. It was a duplex house that was owned by my Uncle Joe, Uncle Hovsep, who was a good 15 years older than my father.
10:57 - 11:53
CG: And there's another story about my three old uncles that were born in in Bazmashen, they moved there in 1945. So I grew up right on Church Street. In that duplex, which is right opposite where the Baker Building is today. And I was because of that, I was able to really see Whitinsville, the business district, the people, the society that was there that almost came together as a social club every, I'd say Wednesday, Thursday, Friday night, because the stores are open till 9 o’clock, and especially in the summertime, people would congregate and just come go downtown, as they would say, and they would mix and talk and laugh and joke. And I observed I took all this in. 
11:54 - 13:25
CG: And one of the vivid memories that I have was on Thursday and or Friday night, my dad and I will walk up to the A & P, which is at the corner of Church Street and Cross Street and that building’s still there today. And we do the heavy lifting shopping because my father would not allow my mother to do it. So we would leave the house maybe 5:30, quarter to six after we ate supper. And we’d start walking up the street now. Under normal conditions, you could walk from our house up to the up to the A & P in maybe 3 minutes. It was that close. It would take us sometimes up to an hour, an hour and a half. Every 20 yards we would stop. My father would know somebody and somebody else would come along. And they'd talk about what happened in the shop today, or something about the Red Sox, or whatever a topic of conversation was going to be germane to them and to be paying attention to. And I would stand there holding my father's hand and I'd be one foot on another, one foot on another, but I dare not say a word because you would never interrupt adults when they were talking. But because of that, I took all this in, and the memory and the smell of it is still with me. And I look back and I miss it because that doesn't happen anywhere today.
13:27 - 13:28
GJ: It is a special place.
13:28 - 13:41
CG: It was a very special place for me and I was so proud that my dad knew everybody and everybody knew my dad and the later years, everybody knew me because that's Charlie Garabedian’s son.
13:41 - 13:44
GJ: Right. Kind of the same thing with my dad.
13:44 - 14:06
CG: And that was so great. And it made me feel as though I belonged or well, sometimes I felt as though I didn't belong because I never felt I was my dad's equal. And to this day I feel the same way. It was a good experience.
14:08
GJ: Now, you said earlier your grandfather worked in the foundry.
14:11
CG: Right, my grandfather…
14:15
GJ: Your great grandfather?
14:16 - 16:18
CG: My great grandfather, I believe he worked there, but I have no proof of that. But I do have proof that my grandfather Hagop Garabedian, Jacob Garabedian worked in the foundry. He came here in 1895. And if I could just for a moment, digress into his story. In 18--I don’t know what year he got, he was married. His wife's maiden name was Martha  Martha Pultoian --  Bazmashentsi. And in 1893, they had their first baby. It was a boy. His name was Nigoghos Garabedian, they just to call him Nick, Nicholas. And in 1894, their second son was born. His name was get called Kirkor Garabedian.  They used to call him K, I call him K Amo. And in 1895, my Uncle Hovsep was born. I used to call him John, but before he was born, my grandfather, Hagop, heard that if you come to Whitinsville in America, there was work there. There was big money to be made. They were poor people, as so many, they all were poor economically. They were at the bottom of the economic ladder living in which was then Turkey by that time. And he got the vision of coming here, making the big money and going back and improving their lifestyle. But to leave he had to go through Istanbul, Turkey, and his first attempt to leave, they apprehended him. They said, you're not leaving this country. They put him in jail. They beat him and threatened him. If you try this again, you're going to be killed.
16:19 - 18:11
CG: They sent him back to the Bazmashen. Now he's like 17, 18 years old, I figure, he was born in 1876, 1877. So he tried it again. The same thing happened. They put him in jail. They beat him and threatened him. “We will kill you if you try this again.” But they didn't kill him. He tried it a third time. The same thing happened. Finally on the fourth time. The man was not to be denied. He had this urge and this drive and motivation, “I'm going to come to America.” So finally, on this fourth time, he discovered that if he bribed one of these guards or whoever the official was, they’d let them go. I don't know how we figure this out, but he had a little gold on him and it worked and he got out. And if I just digress for a minute from a religious point of view, I truly believe that the hand of God was on him, the thing never killed him. And I get very teary eyed when I hear that they beat him up. How did he maintain his faith that he was going to leave and they didn't kill him, but he escaped. He came to America and ended up in Whitinsville. Worked in the Whitin Machine Works. And during that time, from 1895 to 1909, when he finally sent for his wife and three sons, genocide had already commenced over there and people don't talk about that. They still went into Armenian towns and they were killing people just randomly, depending on who they were.
18:15 - 20:15
CG: So in 1909, things were getting to the point that he decided he's not going back. So he didn't go back and he sent for his wife and three sons. Now, he never saw that third baby. My uncle Hovsep was born after he had come to this country, but the other all three had never seen their father, which is the memory, or word of mouth, you have a father that’s in the United States. So when they came here, they went through some terrible times leaving Bazmashen. They went by wagon train to a port on the Black Sea called Samsun, S-A-M-S-U-N, I believe. And in that journey from Bazmashen to Samsun, they encountered Turks, Turkish soldiers. They were always under the fear of being killed. And my Uncle Kirkor told me that there was a very brave Armenian by the name of Haji Zadun, who was guiding that wagon train. And the minute that they knew that it was Haji Zadun’s wagon train, they backed off because they feared this man. They said that he was a ferocious, strong man that for some reason, the Turks hated, and they respected him. And from Samsun they took the boat to Istanbul and somehow they managed to go from Istanbul, I believe to Marseilles, Turkey, Marseille, France, rather. They went across to Liverpool, England, and from Liverpool they came to Nova Scotia.  They didn’t come to Ellis Island. From Nova Scotia they managed somehow they came into North Station by train and that's when they arrived there.
20:15 - 21:44
CG: They got word to Whitinsville that “we’re here.” So my great grandfather, my grandfather Hagop was working in there and they came, they said, “Jacob, Jacob, your family's in Boston.” And he says, “I have to go”. And the word was they said, “You must go.” And there was another Armenian fellow that worked with him. And I don't know his name. I don't remember his name. And he said that the boss “Me too. Me too.” They said, “Yeah, you could go with him too.” So they were really understanding, at least this one boss that they had at the foundry was I was understanding that they had to go and be united. So, he went there and they came back to Whitinsville. And they ended up living down in Plummers on Route 122, I would say in a home that I believe is now demolished but was in the vicinity of where the McDonald’s restaurant is now. It's either where McDonald's restaurant is or just a little further north of the right-hand side. It was a duplex home there, and that's where my father was born in 1910. And then after my father, there were four others, and I think it was 1912, that's when the Whitin Machine Works had built the New Village.  My grandfather was fortunate enough to get a tenement on 31 D Street and that I have a memory of growing up.
21:45 - 21:57
GJ: So let's back up for a second. I want to talk a little bit about if there are any stories or knowledge you have of him working in the foundry and also maybe talk about the village.
21:58
CG: Well, well I have—
22:02
GJ: I think you mentioned you've seen Skip Carr’s book.
22:05 - 23:46
CG: Yes. Douglas Carr, Jr., who inherited the Douglas Carr Funeral Home, showed me a book that he has which contains the actual original document of the payroll of the foundry. I think it's 1903, 1904, I forget the exact time. And in that he said, “I think that your grandfather” and I saw it, I says, “Yes, that's my grandfather.” And in that book, it shows just not his name, but all the Armenian names.  They work by the piece. Every different piece of machinery that they made had a different rate. And the one thing that really impressed me was in a negative sort of way, and it brought tears to my eyes, was that they would compute so many pieces at this amount per piece equals amount. Then they'd do another line if they made different pieces, how much it would be, they tore all that up. In virtually every week there would be a minus 5 dollars, 8 dollars, 2 dollars parentheses after the amount “helper.” These pieces had to be moved from where they being made to someplace else. If those pieces were of a certain, let's say, size and weight that they could not physically move by themselves, somebody would have to help them or that helper’s wage was the deductive from their earnings.
23:48 - 24:29
CG: So for so many weeks my grandfather and maybe make 27 dollars, minus eight take home 21 dollars because of the helper. And that to me was something that was totally unacceptable, and it’s still to this day unacceptable. And I pass this on to a lot of people that are Armenian that don't understand what the Armenians went through. It just wasn't the Armenians in the foundry, a lot of other nationalities that went through this. And people say, well, why do we have unions today? And that's one of the things I point to was because of the mistreatment of the workers, the unfairness of it.
24:30
GJ: Now, Whitin Machine Works then went ahead and built what's called New Village?
24:34
CG: Right, oh yeah, that was built, I believe they moved there in 1912.
24:39
GJ: There are many units, I mean, they probably built over 2,000 units in the town.
24:45
CG: Right, right, exactly right.
24:47
GJ: All over the place.
24:49 - 25:34
CG: It just wasn't on New Village. They had built homes all along Main Street by the fire station. All those side streets: Maple Avenue--Maple Street, Linden Street, they built homes down off Church Street, Woodland Street. They built the Plummer apartments. They call it Plummer apartments. It's on Church Street on the right hand side. Right before you start to descend down the hill into the Plummer’s, that was there. So they had quite a few homes they built, home that I lived in on Church Street was built by the shop, absolutely. But then my uncles bought it, and that's what we rented in 1945.
25:36
GJ: So it was like growing up in Whitinsville for you?
25:39 - 27:20
CG: Well, when things were good, things were good, growing up as a youngster. But there were times when being an Armenian was a negative thing, at that time. But it turned out to be a very big positive thing for me as a human being. I can remember early on when I started playing with kids outside the house, four or five years old, there were a couple of them that were non Armenian, or as we say “odars”. They were they were a little older than most of us because the fellows my age wouldn't say anything to me about being Armenian, but the older ones would. And I can remember there was one of them. I remember his name, but I won't, I won’t use it today. He said to me is you can't play with us unless you say something in Armenian. So I would say “Parev, eench bes es aysor? (Armenian for “Hello,, how are you today?”). Then he would start laughing and the other guys would laugh at me too. And I felt ashamed at being Armenian. Sad to say, I felt shamed and I would start crying and run my home to my mother and tell her, “Ma, they’re laughing at me because ‘hye yem – guh khntan vras’ (Armenian for “I’m Armenian – they’re laughing at me).” And she says, “Mdeek ureh – adonk vov en? -- forget about it, who are they?” But the mark was made upon me. So I always had this feeling of being that I was inferior to them.
27:22 - 28:33
CG: But the positive thing about it was, as I got older, I discovered that who I was as an Armenian, and I started learning about the history of Armenian, of Armenian--how Armenians are strong people. We are such devout religious Christian people. How we are honest people, we are open people, and you know how we feel. We let our emotions immediately be known. This is my opinion and I stand on it. But at the same time, I respect your opinion too. And to this day, because of that negative experience, I have always made sure that I never, ever would feel or express any negative feeling to anybody about who they were in terms of their nationality, their religion, their race, their sex, their economic position in life, whatever it be. You just don't do that to people because that is a non-Christian thing to do. Jesus would not had wanted us to do that.
28:35
GJ: So that's a very valuable lesson, for sure.
28:37 - 29:37
CG: That was great. And I believe that that especially in my teaching career, I always maintained this very neutral feeling of fear feeling or objective feeling to my students. And that's one thing today when I meet my students, especially my high school students, after so many years, they always say to me, “Dr. Garabedian, one thing about you, you’re always fair, you treated everybody the same way and you never ridiculed us.” And I would say to them, “if I ever ridiculed you, my prayer was that God would immediately kill me and send me to hell,” because that's how I felt about it. You just don't do that to people. And looking at the world today, even this country today, that if people would stop treating each other in that way and having more respect for each other, no matter who we are, we can disagree and still get along. Things would be a lot better. That's my only take on it.
29:38
GJ: So what other lessons did you come away with or character traits maybe from being Armenian?
29:45
CG: Well, so much of that comes from my family.
29:49
GJ: Sure. That the families are cultural and similar.
29:52 - 32:09
CG: I can, I can listen, I can hear them always. My mother and father, not so much because I saw them every day and I'd come home from school and mother would say, “how’d the school go today?” She'd always want to know what was going on. And my father, not so much because I think my mother used to tell my father what was going on. But I would always bring home my exams, my tests and show them whatever it was and so long as it was 80 or above, everything was good. The minute, if it ever went below that, they would say, “What's going on?” And I would just say haven’t been studying enough and my father would say, “You have to study. You have to study. You have to study.” So that's set the academic part pretty much.

In terms of social behavior, they taught me, you know, the Armenian saying that you don’t be a jackass with a jackass. And if you meet a jackass, don't try to change him because he's a jackass. Just make sure that you don't be a jackass with him. And that has, I believe, protected me for my life to this very day, that if I meet somebody that treats me with disrespect in any way, shape or form, I just to the best of my ability, look at them and maybe make a sarcastic comment that I'll give you a 5 dollar bill, have a coffee and donut on me. I'm out of here, hasta la vista, baby, as they say. And you just don't get involved with these kind of people and you don't let it bother you at all. That's a very difficult, easier said than done, but I reached the point that if they say that to me, I feel rather honored that I can overcome what they've done with their negative-ness and have not responded with a negative feeling or negative words or negative actions. Just maintain your integrity as an Armenian.
32:10
GJ: Now, your family, your dad's family was here. Your mother's family was not here?
32:16
CG: No. They, my dad’s, my mother's family, I believe, came here in 1912. I don't know too much about them.
32:23
GJ: Came to Whitinsville?
32:24
CG: No, they ended up in Newton Upper Falls.
32:27
GJ: Okay, that’s where they stayed, and she came here.
32:30 - 32:49
CG: Right and then when they got married, they came here, and again, my mother and father, just they always knew that. But it was so distant, they didn't worry about anything genetically being wrong with their children. That was always checked out. But they, they looked at each other as yeah, that we were cousins.
32:49
GJ: That’s funny.
32:51 - 33:52
CG: But my mother's family was raised in Newton Upper Falls. My grandfather worked in a coal yard. And there’s a street down there, I think, that was called the Saco-Lowell Shop as I remember them as they used to talk about that. But there was some industry worked in the coal yard down there and they were very economically poor that, they were at the bottom of the rung, but there were more Armenians there, that they had association with, so they weren't really isolated. And he died in 1947 or 1948. I think it was 47 and he was some place in the sixties. He died very, very young. As was my mother's, my father's parents died. There were 57, 58 years old, they didn't live very long at all.
33:53
GJ: Did--I want to ask you before I forget, if there was an ancestor who you could have a conversation with today, who would it be and what would you want to know?
34:05 - 36:14
CG: I don’t know. I mean, they all come back to my mind. I guess it would have to be the only one that I know would be Haji Garo, my great grandfather. I mean, he's my idol. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be. I think about this a lot. Maybe too much. But that's me. I tend to think about things a lot. I believe that the hand of God was on him, that he came here. Clearly the hand of God was on my two grandparents, my father's mother, my father's parents, that they came here, they escaped that. And I’m quite sure that my mother's parents went through some kind of difficulty, but they never talked about it, I never heard anything about that. And I have to look back today and I say, I thank God you wanted me to be born, and you blessed me that I was born into a family where work ethic was very important and your reputation was very important. You maintain your integrity not just as a family member, but as a nationality, because the they knew that a lot of the odar people didn't like us. It’s what my father said, “you have to be a little bit better than the others,” he said, “If you see anything going on that's bad, there’s one thing you do: get out, get out, get away from it. Run away.” And I did a lot of running away in my life. When I saw something that was not, I guess it would positive that I’d come home and my mother would say to me, “What are you doing,” I’d say, “the guys were starting to do this.” And I said, “I didn't think it was a good idea. So I came home.”
36:15
GJ: So what would you ask your great grandfather? What would you want to know from him?
36:15 - 37:36
CG: I would want to know from him what he experienced. Why did he come here? And I certainly would want to know about the faith that he had in God, because he must have had a lot, because I have some feeling that his father was a priest. I'm not 100% sure of that, but there's another little story that’s off to the side. And I said I would want to know why he made that pilgrimage to Jerusalem at least one time. And what kind of strength that he felt from God that he could somehow have left where he was and come here so early on. That's the biggest thing that I would like to know from him. And what gave him that strength, because I know some of the things that have happened in my life that have given me strength, but I’d like to know what it was or is his strength sources were and how he turned it into being successful. And he was successful. He passed away in 1932.
37:37
GJ: He worked at the shop all his life?
37:40
CG: I don't know if he ever worked in the Whitin Machine Works. That much I don't know. That was never…
37:46
GJ: Oh, well when you say he was a very successful. What do you mean by that?
37:49
CG: He was successful, that he managed to leave there and come to this country.
37:53
GJ: Oh, I see what you're saying. What did he do here in the United States, do you know?
37:58 - 38:21
CG: I don't know that. I know that over there they said that he was a merchant and that he did a lot of traveling, that much I know. Now, what he did here, I don't know. He moved. They said he lived in Boston for a while. What he was doing there, I don't know what he did here. I don't know. I suspect that he worked in the Whitin Machine Works, but I have no written evidence of that. You just don’t know.
38:23 - 38:35
GJ: Cool. Now, I wanted to speak to you of the rumor that this whole thing around immigration in your family, I don't know how to begin to address that. You want to talk about that a little?
38:36 - 40:00
CG: Yeah, my Uncle K, who was my, the middle uncle, the middle of the three uncles that were born over there, got married and his wife had some brothers that were still back in the old country. But I don't think they were from Bazmashen. And he, she wanted him, she wanted him to come here. But at that time there were quotas and she couldn't get them all. My Uncle K was a businessman or a manager, they owned D.K. Garabedian Brothers clothing and shoes on Church Street. They owned that business from 1923, and he was very political. He was highly Republican and he was cute. He was cute in terms of how he would sit down and talk all about the Republican Party. Every single Republican candidate was like a blessing from God. He was the funniest man. And my father never would argue with any of them. That’s one thing I should turn over, my father being 15 years younger than the one that was born in 1895 and just 16 and 17 years younger, he looked at them as his fathers.
40:00 - 41:04
CG: He never would ever say anything against them. He was always so reverent to them in this respect, the hierarchy of the family. And I was in the same boat too, those are my three old uncles. Anyhow, getting back to my Uncle K, he had Republican connections, he loved Republican politicians and if you didn't know them, he made sure they knew him. Somehow he managed to work it, whereby these three brothers could be her sons and they, which was not the right thing to do, but it was approved by other politicians. There was some Armenians in Whitinsville. I don't know who they were that got wind of this and they knew that that wasn't the case and they turned my Uncle K in.
41:05 - 42:28
CG: Government officials come to the Whitinsville and told my Uncle K and said, “Look, this is what you've done, but this is what we found out.” My Uncle K said, “okay, I lied.” But this is important -- that they come here. And because he had to save himself from trouble, some Armenians of Whitinsville didn't like him as a result, didn't like the family. And they said that he turned these, he turned them in, but he was forced to. He was attempting to help, but he was caught in the way he did it. What else did he know? So that caused trouble between him and his wife, and it set up two sides of an argument. Instead of trying to look at the facts. And eventually they got divorced. As a result, some Armenians of Whitinsville didn't like my family because of that. And it's, it came down to me a few times. And once I learned about this, I told them this and then they shook their heads at me. They said, “Oh my God, we were wrong all this time.” And all this trouble was totally unnecessary. But that's some of the feelings of human beings. But thank God to this day we're here. We are all successful. But that's some of the troubles that they all went through. Some of the troubles they all went through.
42:30 - 43:16
GJ:So I want to just talk about the general family. So by that I mean, like you and Martha both earned doctoral degrees, right? You in math and she in Spanish, which I think is unbelievable. Let me start again. So I wanted to just talk about the family for a little bit, both the immediate family and then the larger family, the Garabedian clan -- have a better understanding of what happened to them and who they are today. And I know that both you and Martha, both the doctoral degrees, you in math and Martha in Spanish, which is incredible. I know my dad used to say you can have as much education as you want because the bastards can never take it away from. And it was like education, education, education. That's what it was all about. And I guess it's no different in your family and many other families because that's an asset that is portable. Do you want to talk about maybe start with this, sort of you had like, there were four Garabedian boys, right? So they all had kids. Were there any daughters?
43:16
CG: No. Well, the only girl—
43:20
GJ: Of your grandfather.
43:23 - 43:54
CG: Oh, my grandfather, from my father's family. There was my Uncle Nicholas in 1893, my Uncle Kirkor in 1894, my Uncle Hovsep in 1895, then my father in 1910, my Uncle Richard, my Uncle Dickran in 1911. My Aunt Annie in 1913, my Aunt Zarman in 1919. And then my Uncle Bedros -- Peter in 1921, I believe.
43:55
GJ: That's incredible.
43:56
CG: Yeah.
43:57
GJ: Eight kids.
43:58
CG: Right, right.
43:59
GJ: Any of them live in the Whitinsville area now? Any of the descendants?
44:01
CG: Well, after my father, no. The others didn't ever got married and had children.
44:11
GJ: None of them ever got married and had children? Out of eight people?
44:13 - 44:51
CG: Well, my Uncle Dickran never got married. The poor guy, he passed away in 1944. I'm sorry. He was 44 years old in the 1940s, 1956. And that was a very tumultuous time in my life. And it still is when I think about how he passed away -- that’s another story. My aunt Annie never got married. My Aunt Zarman, Shaman she got married but she didn’t have children. My Uncle Peter, my Uncle Bedros got married and he never had children. So the only ones that had children were my Uncle Nicholas, my Uncle Kirkor, my Uncle Hovsep, and my father.
44:51
GJ: And where are those kids today now or their grandchildren?44:54 - 45:36
CG: My Uncle Nicholas had one son, my cousin Howard. He went on to Providence College. He became, he went into physics, he worked for RCA Victor the electronics company. He ended up living down in Westmont, New Jersey. He got married to an Armenian woman, Rose Kuzujian,  I believe, was her maiden name. A very lovely lady, lovely lady. And they had two boys and two girls. And they are living down in the Philadelphia area today, and they have children.
45:37 - 47:19
CG: My Uncle Kirkor had one son, Hoover Garabedian. He became a lawyer, an attorney in Worcester. He got married. He had one daughter. She is now down in Miami, Florida, I think she became a physician. My Uncle Hovsep had three sons. The eldest being my cousin Joseph, who ran the clothing store. And he passed away like three years ago, four years ago. His next son was my cousin Edward. He went to Boston University, majored in business, in business management. He went into the U.S. Navy. He became an officer and he made it a career. But he died rather young at 49 years old. At that time, he was a Commander, I believe. And then the third son was my cousin, Richard. He was born in 1942, a year and a half older than I. He went to Brown University and he secured a master's degree from Dartmouth College, the Amos Tuck Business School. And he went working for various businesses. He worked for Armour Dial down in Arizona. Then he moved to California and he worked for Tri-Valley Growers. Then he work for a company called Simoni Food Distributors, which he eventually bought, and he is currently living in Hillsborough, California. And he has two children.
47:20
GJ: So incredibly accomplished-- the entire clan.
47:24
CG: Well, if you say, securing education is accomplished. Yes.
47:27
GJ: Yes. That's what I’m talking about.
47:29 - 48:41
CG: Right. I look at it, is that, it makes your life easier. Because what I saw, what my grandparents, what my grandfathers went through, what they had to do to make the economic living, as they say, and even with my father, my uncles had to go through. There was no way else but to go in this direction. And by the grace of God, I taught for 55 years, and I just love it so much. And I sometimes would say to my parents this, “I don't believe they’re giving me money for doing what I did.” The teaching for me was so easy. The difficult part or the, let’s say the negative side of it was, is that you met people that weren’t very cooperative with you. Whether they’d be students or the teachers, parents or administrators. They just didn't understand what you were trying to do in your in your academic mission. And they didn't respect academic thought. Knowledge needs to be respected, especially in mathematics. And I could talk five days on that.
48:41 - 50:14
CG: But I marvel at all of these minds that go back maybe before history was ever recorded that developed mathematics. But there again, I see God, because God created us as human beings, and he gave us something here that he hasn't given other living creatures as much, and I will talk about animals in a moment. But he gave us this ability to think logically and to be able to create something called quantity. I see quantity. I'm sitting here in my living room, and I see ten plaques up on the mantle, but then I see just one flag, and I can distinguish between one and ten. And they created a way of writing it, and it just kept on building. They invented addition. They solved this thing called addition. They solved this thing called equality. They solved this thing called number. And they created this strata of thought that is built like a block of cement on a block, a block of brick on a block of brick connected with cement. And the cement connection is our logic. And we evolved. We can prove these things and it goes on.
50:14 - 51:31
CG: Yet at the same time, we talk about mathematics and animals. Animals can't do that, but they still have some kind of logic whereby they can survive. I will eat two apples a day, part of my regimen of diet and I take the core that I don't eat, and I put it on the railing of my deck because I have a couple of squirrels that come every day and they eat them, and I look at them. I say, they can do things that I can't do. They have a logic of knowing how to go into a tree and they have a place there that they call home that they've made. They've done something that I don't have the ability to do. And I say the same thing about the chipmunks that I see; they can do things that I have no idea what's going on. There is the power of God, the power of creation. And I just sit back and I marvel at that and it makes me feel very small. And I love that because it takes the pressure off me in so many ways.
51:32
GJ: Well, this has been a great interview. I appreciate it, Charles.
51:37 - 52:15
CG: I thank God that you came here, Greg. I am humbled and I am blessed that I'm able to share this with people. And not to take my name and make it bigger. I'm not looking for that. That's not important to me at all. But if it makes somebody else's life better and more positive. And to understand and to even share with me and say, “Charlie, we think what you said maybe could be wrong.” And I would say to them, “Tell me why I'm wrong. Explain to me how you’re thinking.” That helps my mind grow. And that's how we grow as human beings. So thank you, Greg.
52:15
GJ: Thank you, Charles. Really appreciate this.
52:17
CG: Thank God for this day here.

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