Judy Norsigian

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Biographical Text

Transcription

00:05 - 00:07

Gregory Jundanian (GJ): First of all, thanks for doing this. Very nice of you.
00:08 - 00:11
Judy Norsigian (JN): Anything that keeps Armenian history alive.
00:12 - 01:00
GJ: Yeah, it's a challenge. I wanted to first of all, thank you and just say that the interviews will be held at USC as we discussed earlier and on the website. We could start in a number of different directions. But the basic sense, the basic thing we want to get out of this is sort of your impressions of Whitinsville, Massachusetts, and also to talk about you know, what it means to you to be Armenian, how that has shaped your worldview. Those are the two primary things we will go talk about a lot of different things it's more of a conversation than a checklist. So why don't we start with your name and birthdate. Where we are today.
01:01 - 01:16
JN: Judy Norsigian, and I was born Judith Lee Norsigian She, although I never liked Judith because that's what the teacher called me when she was mad at me. And I was born at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Brighton and grew up in Watertown, Massachusetts.
01:16
GJ: Okay, and your birthday?
01:18
JN: Birthday is June 18 1948.
01:23
GJ: When, since you know we started this whole conversation about Whitinsville, what is your relationship to Whitinsville? Because unlike most of the interviews, you’re the first person we have interviewed that didn’t actually grow up there. So, what was your impression of Whitinsville? What’s your relation to the town?
01:42 - 02:42
JN: My great aunt, my mother’s aunt through her, it’s really through her father, lived there. My mother’s father had a brother and a sister who ended up coming over, that’s part of the story I will get to later, and living in Whitinsville, with my great aunt’s husband, Jack. So, Mkhitarian was his last name, her maiden. Of course she was born Germagian. Her brother Mgrdich and she were reunited after a fair number of years, that’s another part of the story. And when she married Jack of course a condition was that her brother stayed with her. And the three of them lived many years together in Whitinsville.
02:44 - 03:18
JN: My mother was born in this country in Newton, MA and she ended up spending lots of time with her aunt. It’s partly because her mother and her father, you know, they had you know several kids, and her mother was really I think in some ways not cut out to be a mother. It’s not the thing that she would have probably have wanted if she had lived in another era. But she ended up living with her aunt for long stretches, so she was very close to Horkor, that’s what we called her.
03:19
GJ: Okay
03:19 - 04:05
JN: So, what happened is that when I was about eight years old, I had my first week away from home in Whitinsville with my great aunt. My mother took me there or my father did, I don’t know who dropped me off. And I was there for a whole week and that experience was repeated other summers but it was getting to know her, live with her and my Uncle Mgrdich and my Uncle Jack, that introduced me to Whitinsville, that really introduced to me to the horrors of what happened during the Genocide. Because my great aunt was one of the women, on that one of many forced marches who survived.
04:09 - 04:41
JN: And that’s in fact, my thoughts about Whitinsville always center on two things. One is the five cents she gave every morning to go to the nickel and dime store which was two blocks away. She lived on Spring Street. And I’d get to go all by myself, with my five or ten cents and spend it on candy or whatever I wanted. And I’d never had an experience like that. I mean you think back and think, wow, that you remember something like, is it that much of a big deal? Well for me it was then.
04:41 - 05:07
JN: So I have yet to go off with that little change in my pocket and buy whatever I wanted and come back all on my own. I think she walked with me the first day. So, I had a kind of independence there, and I would go into the woods behind their house, and take walks. Sometimes I met other kids, but it was really about being independent, and she was a very loving great aunt. She just was the most terrific person.
05:08 - 06:31
JN: She was traumatized. She has PSDT until the day she died, but I didn’t know that as a kid, didn’t see that. In the course of my visits with her and not that much got said then. Now, I don’t remember everything she told me then, versus everything she told me when she was an older woman, living with us here in this very house. And she did stay with us for a period when my mother was here and lived in Watertown. She was very close to my mother and in some ways it was more like a mother-daughter experience. She was never able to have children of her own, partly because of what happened during that forced march: The malnutrition. She lost an eye. She saw unspeakable atrocities some of which she told me at a very young age. The one that seared through my mind, was the story about a young pregnant Armenian woman having her belly slit open by a Turkish soldier. The fetus impaled on the end of the bayonet and thrown into the air. And I am not sure how I processed that back then. I think I part rejected it. It was a horrible image. And I knew about pregnancy and birth. I knew, you know.
06:31
GJ: How old were you?
06:32 - 07:35
JN: I was probably eight years old when I first heard, maybe nine when I first heard that story. It is one of the reasons why I don’t agree with everyone who says that no child should hear a trauma or know about trauma at very young ages. Maybe not four or five, but seven, eight, nine. I am not so sure I agree that that should be absolutely verboten. I think for some kids, it hurts, it sears, but it instills something in you that lasts forever that fans the flames of a social justice conscience. And I do believe that for me, that was part of it. And the other part of course, was stories my father told me about bring discriminated against as a young Armenian man and his rage about it but his also understanding about prejudice and how deep it goes.
07:38 - 08:24
JN: And, when I graduated from college I remember my senior year, that was the year of the Harvard strike, he sat me down and he said, “You know, all these young kids who are striking and demonstrating, you mark my words, in a few years they are going to have cushy jobs, comfortable homes, and they won’t be in the streets protesting.” He said, “The only true radicals are the Black Panthers. They’re willing to put their lives on the line for a cause.” And I remember thinking, “Wow, my father is like you know, I didn’t expect that to come out of his mouth.” And then, and then I stopped and thought, well wait a minute, you know this is the same man who gave me John Dewey, George Santayana to read. And also when I was twelve, he gave me Marriage and Morals to read.
08:25 - 09:06
JN: Marriage and Morals was written by Bertrand Russell, a very important philosopher to my father. And for me it was formative because I don’t know if you know anything about that book but in it he basically says people shouldn’t get married until they live together and know that they are really suited. And so, here I am a twelve-year old reading this philosopher from England who is saying, you know that’s not a sin that’s a good thing. You should live together with someone, have sex, know that you really want to be together and then get married. And so that’s my father and certainly an outlier amongst Armenian men. Of course, I didn’t understand that back then.
09:06 - 10:13
JN: But I have to say that the experience of listening to him and what he had to say about his own experiences, he never was unwilling to talk about the Genocide. Of course I had to talk to him about what my great aunt told me. And I remember he was very understanding. He never once felt she shouldn’t have said anything to me, which I found interesting. Other parents would have. And I don’t fully understand his reasoning, but I do know that sometimes children can digest even horrors like this. And by the way with media today, with television, with you know access to all manner of horrors and images that children have despite what parents think, I think it is important that you have a place to process this stuff, somebody who can reassure you that, you know, this isn’t all that life has to offer and that you can do something about maybe stopping some of these horrors.
10:14 - 11:20
JN: So anyway, my great aunt was stuck in this circle of um, processing the terrible things that happened to her. She arrived here quite traumatized, and in many ways Jack was a good person for her. He was loving. I think he understood what she had been through. She couldn’t have children. He didn’t condemn her for that. She felt terrible that she couldn’t have children and in that respect I think my mother was very important to her. And later on as an older woman, she loved having me there and my sister came too sometimes, she was two years younger. I made choreg with her, we made yalanchi together, we made boereg, we made baklava, and she would show me everything, you know, she made her own dough, and she would you know, melt the butter and spread it on, and you know crush all the walnuts which you shelled yourself. I mean, the whole thing.
11:21
GJ: What was her full name? Did you mention it already?
11:26 - 11:40
JN: Serpouhi was her first name and Serpouhi Mkhitarian is how I knew her. I didn’t even think about Germagian being her maiden name because, you know, those days I didn’t pay attention to that.
11:40
GJ: And what was her brother’s name? Do you remember?
11:43
JN: Mgrdich Germagian
11:44
GJ: Oh, that’s right.
11:45 - 12:29
JN: Jack, her husband, was an affable guy. And I also remember watching soap operas with her in their little living room with the TV, which of course was a relatively new addition at that point in a household. I don’t know what they were, As The World Turns or something like that. And she was, she loved those soap operas, she loved sitting down and watching them. So that’s how I got a window on, you know, the kind of familial problems that you know were portrayed on television that I didn’t see anywhere else.
12:31
GJ: How old was she when she came here? When was she born? Do you know, or roughly?
12:38 - 12:59
JN: You know, I don’t remember. I actually have an oral history of her on a little cassette tape that in this very room we taped her. Years ago. And I just took it over to a video what’s it called, this place in, what’s it called, this place in um?
12:59
GJ: Everpresent
13:02 - 13:17
JN: No, it’s over in Cambridge. They’re transferring it to a stick so that I can share it with lots of people. I’ll give it to you too. I am about to go and pick it up soon. I didn’t want to even try and replay it before I had…
13:18
GJ: Right, smart
13:19
JN: And in it I am pretty sure we say something about when she was born. But I have that information.
13:27
GJ: Do you know anything about her husband’s family or?
13:32 - 13:46
JN: Well, I think I do, but I don’t remember it right now. It’s not the kind of thing…I didn’t know any of his family members. It’s possible that they didn’t make it. It’s possible that most of his family perished in the Genocide.
13:46
GJ: And what did he do for a living in Whitinsville? And her brother, what did he do?
13:50 - 14:14
JN: Well, they all worked in the Foundry, or you know, one of those textile mills, you know. I am pretty sure he was one of the people who worked in that Whitinsville Foundry. They did have friends and relatives in Worcester too. My mother went to Northridge, no what’s it called?
14:15
GJ: Northbridge?
14:16 - 14:49
JN: Northbridge, Northbridge High School. She was the Valedictorian. And she was at that point, I do not remember if, I think her father and mother lived there at that point. I think my grandfather worked there too, in that Foundry. It’s possible she lived for a period with my great aunt Serpouhi  and her husband, and her brother. But I think her family was there at that point. So my mother lived in that area for a period.
14:50
GJ: And same last name as your aunt?
14:53
JN: No. Well, my mother’s maiden name was Germagian because that was the.
15:03
GJ: What was her married name? Actually, what was her father’s name?
15:07 - 16:09
JN: You know, actually I have to go back and…I have to fix this. Germagian was my grandfather’s name so he is the brother of Sirpuhi and Mugurditch. He married my grandmother and her name was Berjouhie. So it is Sedrak Germagian, my grandfather who lived on Putnam Ave in Watertown, who is brothers to Sirpuhi and Mugurditch. I think it’s possible I said something wrong in the beginning. Those three were siblings. I do not know if he got along well with Jack, you know, I imagine that he did. But he did get along with his brother and sister. I don’t think they saw much of each other when my grandfather and grandmother moved to Watertown.
16:10
GJ: So your mother was Valedictorian of the class in Northridge?
16:13 - 17:10
JN: Right. And she played the violin, and she was a good athlete. She wanted to go to college. My grandfather was like, you know, one of the worst in terms of, you know, from the mountainous area, women are to be seen and you know not heard, they’re to be the bearers of children, they do the housework, you know. Children weren’t even supposed to talk to their father. Especially if they were females. Well, the four first you know, my grandmother was brought over after she had given birth to a little girl, and her name was Alice and that’s my aunt who died at nearly age 101 a year and a half ago.
17:11 - 18:01
JN: My grandmother came over here with the agreement that she was brought over to be the husband of my grandfather with the agreement that he would eventually bring over her daughter. And she stayed with the mother of her husband who had disappeared into the mountains. He was fighting the Turks. And she even tried to find him once and you know located him in the mountains and he basically said, “you can’t be here we’re fighting, go back to my mother,” her in-laws, which she didn’t want to be there and you know stay there. She didn’t want to stay with this woman and her daughter there, and it was horrible for her. And I think the mother in-law didn’t like her either. That’s why this arrangement was made that she be sent over here.
18:02 - 19:51
JN: Because after a while, they assumed that her husband was dead or gone, you know. The truth is he wasn’t dead and that’s another story which is that when my Aunt Alice was five years old she had been living in I guess Istanbul with her you know father’s mother, her grandmother. He got word to her that he was on a ship. Couldn’t come in of course because he would have been killed by the Turks. But he was on a French ship that was anchored right in Istanbul in the harbor and my grandmother rode out in a boat with my aunt. I mean not my grandmother, her grandmother, rode out in a boat to meet her son and that was the one and only time she got to meet her father was on board this ship. She told me this you know, years and years ago but I remember when I saw her in her late 90’s she recounted it again. That that was the most meaningful thing that she got to meet her father once. She will never forget it. Sat on his lap. Hugs, kisses then got back on the little rowboat. And her grandmother rode her back to shore. And then years later she found out that he made it to Iran, and he did marry and he had a son. And many years later when my aunt had married this odar, you know who is much older, and she divorced the Armenian man that she had married. She went to Iran and she met this half sibling. Yeah, she did.
19:52
GJ: Wow
19:52
JN: Yeah, she did. Because she found him somehow. And she went with her husband and they had a reunion in Iran.
19:59 - 20:22
GJ: You know what amazes me, is you know, think about it, how many families were just destroyed. Torn apart. How many towns were torn apart, yet people somehow put it back together. They get new families. They get new communities. It might not be the community that was around for hundreds of years. It could be a community like Whitinsville where people from all different villages came together and formed a new community.
20:23 - 20:55
JN: And also sometimes people from the same village felt a certain bond. They escaped. My father’s family was from Kharpert, my grandfather I think was from Aintab, I’m not sure. My grandmother was Sebinkarahisar, that’s my mother’s mother. It was clear to me that people often mentioned the villages where they came from and that created a bond.
20:56 - 21:32
JN: I was sorry to learn as an older child that so many families wouldn’t speak about the Genocide. It was this sort of blank. This huge, gaping hole in the lives of some families. Where you knew something happened, but you didn’t know quite what. And you discovered it sometimes too late to talk about the people who could tell you the stories because they had passed away. And I am sad that that happened for some people in my generation.
21:33 - 22:37
JN: But then I also have to understand that the pain of remembering, thinking, speaking was just too much for some people. Everybody processed it differently. For my great aunt in Whitinsville, she had to tell the story over and over again. That’s the way she processed it. It was a source of pain, constantly for the rest of her life. And yes, she could find moments of joy. But you could feel in her the trauma. As I got older I could feel it. That this was a trauma you never go beyond. And by the way, for her, and I forget where she was when they figured it out. There is a whole story of this, and it’s I think is on the tape, she did find her brother. They got reunited. And that was really important I think for her survival, to get reunited with her brother. And then they were able to be in the United States together. You know, the idea for many Armenian women was that to be a whole person you had to have a child, right.
22:39
GJ: Well it’s passed down.
22:40 - 23:40
JN: Well I’m not so sure my mother’s mother, my grandmother Berjouhie felt quite that way. I mean she had children because she married this guy. She had children but I think that she, she could have had joy in other ways too. She was this incredible gardener, and she was a passionate woman, and there is something about her that was really effusive and exciting for me. She didn’t just see herself as you know doing this sort of obligation of being a mother and taking care of the house and raising the kids, you know. She had other things, you know. The joy of music and dancing, you know. I did find out later from one of my mother’s sisters that she probably had male visitors too to the house. She had, you know, there was a passion in her that went beyond whatever she did with my grandfather.
23:41 - 23:57
GJ: So, did you learn much away from your aunt and away from that family, did you learn much from your other I don’t know ancestors, but your grandfather for instance, or your, anything on your mother’s side?
23:59 - 24:25
JN: Well, I said on my mother’s side my grandfather, Sedrak, I mean he was exhausted. He came home. It was 100 degrees plus in there. He just wanted his meal to be made and he would sit down. Maybe read the paper, have a cigar. Go to bed early. Get up early. I have no idea what kind of relationship he truly had with my grandmother.
24:28 - 25:14
JN: He didn’t want, especially young females, bothering him. It was a different story with his son Hague, Hank as we called him. The fifth child in my mother’s family, for my grandfather it was his fourth child. But at the age of 12, Alice was brought over, and for a short period she lived in that house but she hated it there. And she hated the, you know, the straight jacket that her stepfather was trying to put her in. She had grown up going to a Catholic girls school. She was educated. She could read. I mean this way that her father or stepfather thought about her, this is what you should do as a young Armenian girl, that was not okay with her.
25:15
GJ: And Alice was your mother?
25:17 - 25:55
JN: No, Alice is the first of my grandmother, my mother’s, mother’s children born in Armenia to that man who went off in the mountains, her husband. They assumed he was dead. He wasn’t. But then she ended up coming here with the promise when she married Sedrak , my grandfather, my mother’s father, that he would bring over her daughter. So, Alice was a stepchild to my grandfather. The first born child to my grandmother, Berchuhi, and my grandfather Sedrak, was my mother, Assif, Agnes.
25:56 - 26:36
JN: And Agnes, really smart kid. I think she had a streak of independence in her as well. I mean it was horrible that she did so well and she wanted to go to college and he said no. She ended up going to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia to become a lab technician. So, she was, she drew bloods at Mass General Hospital. It was not what she wanted to do. She dated a young physician at Mass General.
25:37 - 28:04
JN: That could have been something much better for my mother to pursue as her relationship but she was a roomer at this house on Porter Street in Watertown while she was working at Mass General and she stayed in the bedroom of my father. Then, in the Army, off in Fresno California, and she fell in love with his books. I think she may have met him once when he was on furlow. Anyway a long story short, she takes off on a train for the West Coast and shows up at my father’s doorstep kind of unannounced and you know nobody to this day really understood. She couldn’t really explain it when I talked to her. Like what possessed you to go out there to see this guy whose books you loved? And you met him once but you didn’t have a relationship, you weren’t going to get married. And I didn’t know what he thought at the time. They ended up of course, he stayed there, she ended up getting pregnant and they had to get married. But they were not well suited for each other. But that’s the story of my mother just sort of settling sort of into this home, you know. Renting a room and then falling in love with my father’s books and then later on marrying him. So, I think the fact that they were both intellectual probably brought them together a little bit.
28:04
GJ: So you grew up in an Armenian community much like…?28:06 - 29:31
JN: Absolutely, Watertown. I grew up on Porter Street. I was born at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. At five years old, we moved to Charles River Road and my aunt, my father’s only sibling, Aghavni, moved upstairs with her husband. Not right away, they were still on Porter Street. They moved in when the people upstairs bought a home next door. They had come in as renters at first. And I think that was partly to make some money. And so for a few years, they had a son, Christopher. They were, you know, she was Italian, he was maybe of English descent. They had a son Christopher who played with my brother. Then they moved next door to a single-family home. For many years they were there until they moved to another part of Watertown. And then my father’s sister moved in upstairs. But that’s really, for me that was also the beginning of being in a neighborhood which didn’t have as many Armenians as over in Porter Street, which is closer to East Watertown and way more Armenians.
29:33 - 29:54
GJ: You know I remember growing up and I think the first words I learned from my Dad is you will marry an Armenian. And, you know, and by the way now that you know how to read, here are some books on Genocide. You know that was my introduction to being Armenian. He didn’t talk at all much.
29:56
JN: But he gave you books.
29:57
GJ: He gave me books and he said, “Read these, and let me know if you have any questions.” Of course he wouldn’t talk about it.
30:04
JN: And he was a lawyer.
30:05
GJ: He was lawyer.
30:07
JN: So, your Dad would have understood the importance of your knowing all of this.
30:10 - 30:45
GJ: Yeah. And he definitely understood the importance of it. But I kind of remember, like being different even as a kid. Like, being Armenian. I remember going back to Armenia in 1980 and thinking, “Wow there is an entire country that thinks like my grandmother.” You know I couldn’t, I didn’t really understand. I always felt like we were different in Whitinsville. All Armenians were. We were Middle Easterners in the middle of a New England Village.
30:47 -
GJ: When did you feel like, or did you feel like you were different being Armenian?
30:52 - 31:55
JN: Well, you can’t um. I mean growing up in Watertown. Remember, a third of the population’s Armenian there, I mean. And I did go to Armenian Sunday schools. My parents were not religious. In fact, my father was an agnostic. He hated the Catholic Church. We had Catholic neighbors up the street who used to tell us we were going to go to hell because we were not Catholic. My father was a bit irreverent when the girl up the street said, “Well if you are not baptized, you’re really going to go to hell.” I went and said, “You know we got to get baptized. Dad,” cause I found out we weren’t and he went into the kitchen, he got a glass of water and he went like this [gesturing sprinkling water], “Here, you’re baptized.” He did not believe in that. My mother did orchestrate a baptism for the four younger kids. My mother had five kids and the oldest, Gary, was baptized. But then there was an argument about which aunts would be the godparents and so my parents said forget about this we are not going to fight with people. And so the four of us weren’t.
31:56 - 33:23
JN: I was probably eleven years old when the four of us got baptized. Probably Saint Stephens it was. But I went to Sunday School a little bit at Saint James, a little bit at Saint Stephens, you know. Mostly at Saint Stephens and one of the things that was so important in my formative years was the curriculum that Virginia Tashjian created at the Saint Stephens Sunday School. Of course I had no idea that this was unique. She is the one who was the Director of the Newton Free Library, which became famous in this country for so many reasons. And a visionary way beyond her years. She was an amazing educator and traveled a lot. So, she had every one of us in the Sunday school system there study world religions. So, we knew about Buddhism, Confucianism, Catholicism, you know Protestantism, and the Armenian Apostolic Tradition, you know, the Orthodox Christians in that region were unique in some ways. But one of the things that I learned from her curriculum is that no one religion is better than any other. Islam. She said people have different traditions. They believe in, you know a God in a different way. Sometimes multiple Gods, you know.
33:24 - 34:19
JN: It was really an eye-opening thing for me to learn that so many different religions existed in the world. We didn’t see them in Watertown. There were the Italians and the Irish who went to the Catholic Schools and also to the Catholic Churches. And there were a bunch of Protestants who went to you know the Methodists, the Congregational, the Episcopalian churches. And by the way, at a certain point, I don’t know maybe I was 10, 11, 12, my friends in grade school, I don’t think I was in junior high school yet, they were at the Phillips Congregational Church on Mount Auburn Street in Watertown. And I wanted to be with them on Sundays so I said to my parents, “ I want to switch Sunday School and go to the Phillips Congregational Sunday School,” so I can be with whoever was there.” I don’t even remember who the kids were. And my parents were fine.
34:20 - 35:04
JN: So, I don’t even remember who drove me or if I had to walk. It was a good mile from our house to that church. Maybe more. But I, I had this kind of freedom to choose what I wanted to do on Sunday morning and my parents probably got flak from Armenian relatives for that period but they didn’t care. My mother loved the liturgy, she loved the music. She would go sometimes just to hear the Badarak, and she was, she wasn’t religious. My father of course was agnostic and so we never got the kind of inculcation that other kids might have gotten.
35:05 - 35:18
GJ: Were there like, speaking of inculcation, were there lessons that your parents tried to drill into you or your relatives tried to drill into you that were you think were distinctly because of their background?
35:19 - 36:41
JN: Well, I think my father because of his experience and because he was such an incredibly well read individual, was profoundly humanist and cared about social injustices which is why he admired African Americans who were standing up to racism. And also, Whites who did the same. So, I, and I could see it in his actions. When I was in high school. Nah, maybe it was 9^th or 10^th grade. It could have even been my junior high school year. It could have been 10^th grade. I can’t remember. It was around there. We were at summer camp for the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra. I was a cellist in the Boston Youth Symphony from 8^th grade to 12^th grade. And when I was really young, there were only five of us in the 8th grade, and we were like, you know odd by these older high school kids. But, one summer when we were at Sargent Camp, which was run by Boston University. And Boston University was the place that offered us rehearsal space and actually I think employed Marvin Rabin who was the conductor for the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra at that point.
36:43 - 37:30
JN: And there were a group of young Kenyan men who were there in some program and I think it was related to the military but I’m not sure. Anyway, I got to be friendly with one of the young men. They were probably in their late teens, maybe early 20s. We would eat in the same cafeteria. The students in the Orchestra and those who were there for this other program. And actually I would love to go back and figure out why they were there. So, we became friendly, and I said, “If you come back” or maybe it was later that fall, I said “Why don’t you come over for dinner.” I told my father about these young men and what they were doing. I don’t even know what they were doing now but, and my father said, “Great, we’ll have them over for dinner.”
37:31 - 39:07
JN: And I don’t even know how they got there from BU or who drove them or you know, or if they took a bus. But all I remember is that some Sunday this guy was there for dinner and we were having a very nice time and he was explaining things about his country and what he did in Kenya. My father was very gracious. And then afterwards, my aunt who lived upstairs, who was an extraordinary bigot, you know, really. She was upset when my sister dated an African American kid who lived, I don’t know, Belmont or Brookline you know. I don’t even remember where they met because it wasn’t in Watertown. The Watertown School System, where there were very few Blacks at that point, my father had a row with her. He yelled at her. He told her that she had to mind her own business. I don’t even know whatever else he told her. But it was clear to me that he was distressed that his sister who was so bigoted but he wasn’t going to tolerate it. And basically said you have to mind your own business. And he did that when my sister was dating a Black kid, you know. My father didn’t want you know her to be running around sleeping with anybody, you know. I think he was worried about that. It didn’t matter who the kid was. But it didn’t bother my father one wit that she was dating an African American kid and I don’t even know how old they were: 14, 15, 16, maybe. I don’t even think that they were 16. And they may have just been having, you know, a friendly play date. I don’t even know what she was doing. But he came over. He was at our house.
39:12 - 40:48
JN: So, that to me was extremely formative. My mother of course agreed with all of this. She was in the League of Women Voters, she did what she did, you know, she supported Adlai Stevenson. I don’ t know that they did anything explicitly around racial justice but they were working on progressive causes in one way or another, you know. My father had lunch every Saturday with Jimmy Ekmejian. Jimmy didn’t live in Watertown. I forget where he lived. But he was the head of Romance Languages at Wellesley College. And Jimmy was a die in the wool Republican. I don’t think there were that many Armenians back then who were Republican, although there were some. Now there are a lot more, now. It happens generationally. It’s not, you know, a surprise. But my father used to have, you know, knock down dragged out fights with Jimmy over Nixon, and I remember, this is a quote, when he’s yelling at Jimmy one day, “Mark my words, that man is going to do great damage to this country.” And he somehow understood that Nixon was a problematic personality. And when was this? I was eight or nine so probably 56’, 57’, 58’.
40:48
GJ: Under Eisenhower
40:49 - 41:28
JN: Oh yeah, this was late 50s, maybe. He knew something about Nixon already. And Jimmy was very conservative and you know always voted Republican. So I could see my parents were Democrats. I understood a little bit about politics. Not much. I mean when you are a kid, especially in those days, you know. All the stuff that we see politically on television wasn’t there. You know I occasionally talked to my father about these things. But it meant that I would have a different perspective sometimes from friends, you know.
41:29 - 42:34
JN: When I was in 8^th grade and Thelma moved into Watertown, one of the first Black families. So, when was this? Because I’m 13. It’s 1961. The kid that I had been very close to from kindergarten who lived on the other side of Watertown. I used to ride my bike all the way from Charles River Road to Appleton Street. She and I were in her kitchen when I heard her mother and father expressing concern about Blacks moving into Watertown because the value of their homes would go down and they were saying things that really struck me as odd. But I was 11 and so I didn’t say. I went home though and told my father. They were upset that there was a Black family moving into Watertown and you know concerned about house values and he was, you know, “Yup, there are people like that, and we don’t share those beliefs at all.”
42:35 - 43:18
JN: He’d become a member of the Masonic Order and he probably should’ve known better because I think he knew that we then invited Thelma to join Rainbow Girls which I was a member of now that he had gotten in. There were other kids in my class who were in Rainbow Girls. I had no idea it was a racist organization. So, we invited Thelma, some of us who got to know her in 8^th grade, to join. And then of course we find out she can’t join and the adults around us say the rules are made in the South and we’re like, some of us are horrified. And we write a letter and we all resign in protect and send a letter down to the headquarters, wherever it is in a Southern state.
43:18 - 44:09
JN: And my father stayed a member of the Masonic Order. I think he did that for social, work reasons you know. His coworker at BF Goodrich, Hood Rubber, had gotten him in. But he was happy that we were all, you know, quitting. But not all of us quit. This really good friend whose parents had said that racist thing about not wanting Blacks to move into Watertown, she didn’t quit. And it was at that point on, from 8^th grade on, that we were never really close again. Even though we went through high school. We even got in and went to the same college. We both went to Radcliffe together. I was the Salutatorian, I was the Valedictorian, she was the Salutatorian, and we didn’t see each other much in college.
44:10 - 45:13
JN: But I realized throughout my college years that something like that does create a rift. You know when you have a deeply held belief and someone you thought you were close to doesn’t share that belief, in fact, they share a very different belief, you can’t be close in the same way. Even though you are in the same classes, you, you know, move in the same circles, but you never have that same kinship. It’s maybe the first time I’ve had that happen in a close relationship with a kid who then because of her parental views, I could see that, parted company with me on some deeply held beliefs about you know racial equality, you know. I don’t think I even knew who Martin Luther King was then, you know. I didn’t know much about what was going on in the Civil Rights Movement until I probably got to college. But I understood some basic things about humanity from my father.
45:13
GJ: So your dad, stepping back for a second, your Dad’s family came from where again?
45:20
JN: Kharpert
45:21
GJ: Kharpert, and his, what was his experience or his family’s experience? I think pretty much you have talked about your mother’s experience, branch of the family in Whitinsville. What was your dad’s family’s experience?
45:35 - 46:50
JN: Well, his father came over to settle and bring them over because he was expecting what was coming. He was one of the Armenians who understood it’s only going to get worse and wanted to bring his family over. And he had a relationship with the Mayor in the town who was going to help take care of, you know, my grandmother and my father, and his Sister. In the end of course they had to arrange escaping through the woods. Yeah, with a Kurd, and I don’t know how they knew the Kurd. All I know is that he went with my grandmother, my father and his younger Sister. My father was five, she was two. And they went through the woods trying to basically get out of the region to somewhere, to safety. And in the course of doing so, a band of Turkish soldiers did stop them. One of the soldiers knew the Kurd, and knew that this was not a husband of this woman and those were not his children. But he also didn’t want his friend to be killed, so he said, “Yeah I know this guy, that’s his wife and children.” They let them through, they made it to safety.
46:50 - 47:36
JN: They ended up first in a refugee camp I think, but then they ended up in Marseille. And they were there until my father was 15. And they had some relatives coming over to Watertown and he stayed with an aunt. I can’t remember all the people who lived in Marseille together. He was of course, fluent in French and Armenian, came to Watertown at the age of 15 and. Well maybe it wasn’t Watertown. They came to Boston and they moved to Watertown afterwards because he was at Boston English High School. That’s right, they were in Boston. And he got thrown in with no English. But he was really smart and really good at Math.
47:36 - 48:46
JN: And anyway, he ended up graduating Boston English. He got a scholarship to MIT. Except that his father then died, and he ended up having to go to work during the day and he went to night school at Northeastern and got a different kind of certificate and eventually became a time study Engineer at Hood Rubber BF Goodridge. So he never got to really pursue his love, which was Mathematics. But he had the four-volume set of Neuman Mathematics in our house. And when I got older, he’d go through some of it with me and I developed a love of Math partly because of his influence. I joined the Math team in high school and it was, it was sad for me as I got older that my Dad never got to do what he really loved, just like my mother didn’t get to do what she really wanted to do which was go to college, go to medical school, and become a physician. It just, culturally it was not acceptable and so she lived her whole life wishing she could have done something different.
48:47
GJ: That’s a common theme I think among a lot of that generation.
48:51 - 49:44
JN: That’s so true. I met so many Armenian women who, even though they wouldn’t always admit it, had a dream of doing something else or something in addition to becoming a mother and a homemaker. And it’s, and I think it’s in part because there was a way in which Armenian women had the respect of the community even if they weren’t allowed all the choices and options they might have dreamt about. You had to really be a renegade to pursue some of these things. But it’s because of that sense of self and your sense of your own worth that you could even in fact dream about doing something else. And there were a lot of smart Armenian women who, you know, some of them got out of the mold, some of them didn’t. But there was a lot of talent that never got realized there.
49:46
GJ: And I think that’s why our generation was so important to them because they wanted us to live their dreams.
49:52 - 50:28
JN: Right. Right. And you know even in the conservative sort of milieu that was created, and mind you, that’s what I have been doing to this day, is struggling with some of the most horrible aspects of the conservative Armenian community, especially those shaped by the Church: the homophobia; the anti you know, I would say misogynist streaks in the Armenian Church. All of that to this day, and I will talk about that in a minute.
50:28 - 51:56
JN: It’s troubled me deeply and I remember I used to have long conversations with Father Dajad Davidian who was a priest at Saint James for many years. And he like my father, and they knew each other, was an intellectual who was very unhappy with aspects of Church teachings and I mean he knew more about feminism than I did at a certain point. And I don’t know if you know this but we rented space from the Saint James Armenian Cultural Center in Watertown on Mount Auburn Street when Our Bodies Ourselves, it was then called the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, needed to find space because we had all of these things in our homes, and there was no room for everything. We had a little money. The book was a bestseller. So we rented space in the cultural center there and it was, we were in the basement for you know a number of years and because I was there all the time I sought Father Dajad and we would have conversations about his conversations with my dad who of course passed away in 1970 and he would describe to me his understanding of Church teachings and he gave me Women, Church, and State, that amazing book by Matilda Jocelyn Gage. I don’t know if you have ever heard of her. Go look her up.
51:57 - 52:46
JN: So, Women, Church, and State is a classic in the feminist literature. I didn’t know who she was and Father Dajad had read the book. He gave it to me. And he really liked what we were doing. He was a feminist at heart. And years later when I was going to Armenia back and forth, you know, doing presentations at the AUA, and sometimes we’d meet on the plane going and he would attend part of the Conference for AIWA, Armenian International Women’s Association. And I was on the board for more than 20 years. He would constantly introduce me to people who thought like we did. Sometimes on the plane. Sometimes it was a young Armenian physician who was going to get a post doc at Boston University School of Medicine. He was always networking.
52:47 - 53:37
JN: And I loved Father Dajad. I just adored him. And he was a visionary who, as the years went by, and more conservative forces in the Armenian community became prominent, he wasn’t not as well respected by people in the Armenian community here. I felt sad about that. I could see that happening. There were conservative, even racist elements in the Armenian community who were super conservative about things like gender identity and sexual orientation. I you know, because of my work with Our Bodies Our Selves, of course we were constantly trying to be an antidote to that attitude in the larger community. It’s not just the Armenian community.
53:38 - 53:57
JN: But it has pained me to see how horribly divisive this has been in Armenia today. I have to say that I was excited to see the documentary Mel, which I am sure you know about. Have you been following its history a little bit?
53:58
GJ: A little bit, but I haven’t seen it.
54:00 - 54:48
JN: Well, it finally launched at a film festival I think last year. But, we had conversations with Mel and after he had transitioned. Do you know that when he was she, was a weightlifting champion of sorts and won medals. And from the time, I guess the time Melina was 12, knew that she really wanted to be a boy. And it was absolutely clear to her that she was a boy in a female body and this was very consistent and very different from some of what you’re seeing today in this country.
54:48 - 55:15
JN: This was a genuine case of gender dysmorphia. The transitioning experience and the hate that came out of the Armenian community in Armenia required that they have basically get political asylum. Mel at that point committed to transitioning with his girlfriend. A move to the Netherlands where they are even now, today. They couldn’t go back to Armenia. They would probably get killed.
55:17 - 56:22
JN: And that kind of phobia is really sad to see. And of course the Parliament is filled with it and it’s, it’s against women’s rights as well. But it is one of the reasons why I feel it’s important to support those in Armenia who are taking up this struggle until the culture can be truly embracing of everyone’s human rights. It’s never going to succeed in getting recognition of the Genocide and all the other things we need. Armenians have got to understand that you have to recognize human rights at all levels. And it is our human right to have this Genocide recognized, but it is also the human right of everyone to be, you know, accepted for who they are whether they are gay, straight, lesbian, transgender. You know, it’s. And the Church has played a horrible role in this disaster in Armenia and even in communities here. But it's much more monolithic in Armenia.
56:23
GJ: There is so much I want to say but we will have to have a discussion later about this because this is an interview and I don’t want to…
56:33
JN: Right
56:34
GJ: interject too much.
I want to go back to after you graduated from college. It was right around then that you got involved in Our Bodies Ourselves, or had you done something in the interim?
56:46
JN: Right after.
56:47
GJ: Or what did you want to do actually coming out of college? What were your dreams?
56:51 - 58:06
JN: You know it was really not clear to me. I lived communally in upstate New York for a year, a year in a quarter. I came back, lived communally in Cambridge Massachusetts. Was learning a lot about different things. I worked as a street worker with teens, in inner city Cambridge. I became Co-Director of a Teen Center. This was with funding from the Law Enforcement Assistant Program, it’s LEAP Funding supported Teen Centers across the country and so I was a Co-Director of one with another young African-American man in North Cambridge at that point. And then, and this came out of my work summers while I was in college I worked at the Cambridge Arts Center in Newtown Court which is near Central Square. One of these federally funded housing projects that had a really wonderful program for kids in the summers and I worked there. It was my work-study job which helped me support myself through college too.
58:10 - 58:51
JN: But I, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I did take the MCAT. I thought I might go to Medical School. And while I was living in this commune in Cambridge, one of the men was in a men’s group with Ed Pincus who is a Professor at MIT and a film maker and his wife, Jane Pincus, was a member of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. At that point, the little newsprint edition of the book had already been published in December of 1970.
58:51 - 01:00:04
JN: I moved into this commune I think it was around September of 1970. No, no, no, excuse me, it was September of 1971. And that’s when I started going to these meetings. I was, you know, maybe it was August I moved in. But anyways, I found out there was this meeting of women that were doing this interesting stuff because I heard in the course of dinner that, you know, Chuck was in this men’s group with Ed, and Ed’s wife Jane was involved in this you know, interesting Our Bodies Our Selves book/project. At that point there wasn’t a plan to do a big book. It was a newsprint booklet and there were community courses and anyways I started going to these meetings because they were open and fluid gatherings. I fell in love with these women. I loved what they were doing. I loved the booklet. And I was also someone who cared a lot about food and nutrition. And I had done organic farming and gardening when I was living in Upstate New York. And I looked at the booklet and there was nothing in there about nutrition. Yes, all these other things are important about our bodies, but so is nutrition, and food, and.
01:00:05 - 01:00:52
JN: So I said I’d like to work on the next edition of this book and do something around food and nutrition and women and that’s the beginning of my connection to this group. The rest is history. The big publishers in New York got wind of this you know little newsprint booklet selling like wildfire across the country and they knew that it would be a bestseller. So, Random House and Simon & Schuster came to Boston. The editors vied for our attention and you know I was involved in those meetings. In early 72’ we incorporated officially. We became a nonprofit organization in order to sign a contract with Simon & Schuster. At that point we chose Simon & Schuster over Random House.
01:00:52 - 01:01:49
JN: So, I did have these other, I was working during this period in the you know Co-Directing the Teen Center and working with street, with youth in the streets of Cambridge. And, you know having all kinds of interesting experiences there. There was also a lot of disruption, and you know small riots, and kids turning cars over, especially police cars, and you know, my trying to chase the kids to get them back to safety. And, you know, a lot of that kind of um you know, I would say it was confusion because I didn’t always understand what was going on. This was less about police violence then it was more about other kinds of protests.
01:01:49
GJ: Against authority.
01:01:51 - 01:02:25
JN: Yeah, there was, it was against authority and also wanting to see certain changes made quickly. But police violence was a, was a piece of it. But it wasn’t as prominent as it is now and it wasn’t about police violence against African-Americans per se, it was about, you know, the police, you know, doing things, pushing kids around, many, many, of the kids were young, white, and poor as well. It was a very mixed picture.
01:02:27 - 01:03:17
JN: But I remember thinking, as I kept meeting with these women, this is really such an important project. This is where I want to be. And I didn’t go to medical school. I stayed with the group. I guess part, maybe in 1974 or 75’ I started working part-time with the organization doing some of the sort of administrative work and left working in Cambridge as, you know, as a teen worker and then focused much more on women, health, sexuality. Got very interested in all of these issues: abortion, contraception, health care reform, eventually menopause. You name it. And obviously, it became my life’s work.
01:03:17 - 01:04:37
JN: And I am about to extricate [myself] somewhat from it this year. I will be stepping down as Chair of the Board and a younger woman is taking over and I will be stepping off the Board completely next year. Possibly sooner because we are in very serious conversations with Suffolk University about a complete merger. They are already running the website for the organization which is our major means of reaching the public. We are still doing advocacy work and work with our global partners. Groups that do translation adaptations of the book. Most recently, the Brazilian women came out with a phenomenal three volume book that is now published as one volume. And so we are still doing that kind of work and hopefully it will all continue under the umbrella of the Center for Women’s Health and Human Rights at Suffolk University. That’s our dream. And if all goes well, you know the work will continue there and some of the younger women on the Board will assume more prominent roles as OBOs (Our Bodies Our Selves) becomes a project of institution at Suffolk University.
01:04:38
GJ: That is fantastic.
01:04:39
JN: There is even also a small endowment that’s supporting the website now so we can grow that endowment to support the other work as well.
01:04:47 - 01:04:54
GJ: I remember seeing that book everywhere as a kid in the 70’s: in food co-ops, in people’s bookshelves. That book was…
01:04:55 - 01:05:43
JN: Well, it was a New York Times Best Seller for a few years and the letters we got correspondence, the way it traveled the globe. There were 30 some-odd translation adaptations in different formats. It is an amazing story. There is a book about some of these projects. It’s, it’s quite extraordinary. And we are so happy that our archives are at Schlesinger Library so that many students, many scholars can use the wealth of materials there now. It’s one of their most used archives and we’re happy about that. There was much more limited use during the pandemic but now that they are open again, and they’re still processing our hundreds of thousands of documents.
01:05:44
GJ: Wow.
01:05:44
JN: Yeah, that’s, and their oral history’s there.
1:05:48
GJ: What a legacy.
01:05:50 - 01:07:10
JN: Yeah, and we’re featured in one of the most, I think, important documentaries about the women’s movement during the late 60’s and early 70’s. It’s a film called She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry by Mary Dore. It’s, I don’t know, maybe five, six years old now. That documentary has got great snippets from hours of interviews that Mary did with founders in Our Bodies Our Selves and she even filmed a little bit of our 40^thAnniversary Symposium which was held at Boston University in October of 2011. But that film, what she left on the cutting room floor plus what other people have produced could make another documentary that, you know, might be well worth doing. My dream is to have a documentary that included all the women around the globe who produced translation adaptations of the book. Throughout Europe, Asia, Africa. The, you know, Latin America, the Brazilian edition. We’re really, we’re at a point where the global story is yet to be told.
01:07:11
GJ: That’s a fantastic idea.
01:07:12
JN: Yeah
01:07:29
GJ: Wow. Well we could end this now I just want to just see if I had any other questions. I think we have covered quite a lot of stuff.
01:07:23
JN: Oh yeah.
01:07:25
GJ: Are there any, anything that you would like to leave the interview with? Maybe your mother’s favorite recipes?
01:07:35
JN: Uh
01:07:36
GJ: Being Armenian and writing about nutrition and cooking.
01:07:40
JN: Well, um.
01:07:41
GJ: Whatever you would like to leave with.
01:07:43
JN: I do have to say that growing up in a household where there was fabulous Armenian food and my mother became a devotee of Adelle Davis.
1:07:55
GJ: Okay
01:07:56 - 01:08:59
JN: So, she got into good nutrition when I was fairly young. And I love the fact my mother, you know, taught yoga in her later years. She used to have yoga classes in this very house up into her 80’s. And her six or seven students in the area would come and she’d feed them dinner afterwards. She lived here with us for a number of years before she passed away. And my mother was such an independent spirit. And I think she epitomizes the feistiness of so many Armenian women even though, not even most of them could realize their full potential. And I do love making yalanchi, even though I haven’t had much time to do it, I can do it. I love it. I like making vospov kheyma, which we eat a fair amount of. I do pick things generally that don’t take that much time to make. What is the, anoush abour?
1:09:01
GJ: Yeah, with the fruit…
01:09:02
JN: Yeah
01:09:02
GJ: and the raisins. 
01:09:04 - 01:09:32
JN: Yeah, I like to make that. Um, and then I dream about getting the pastry and you know spending more time to make Baklava, and Durlingar, these things that take more time. But I haven’t yet gotten around to that. I haven’t made Choreg. My mother used to make it all the time. But I love it. And, you know, I’d go to the Armenian stores and get what I can’t make myself cause I just love that food.
01:09:33 -
GJ: It’s, the food is such an important part of our culture. They bring the family together.
01:09:40 - 01:10:38
JN: I do have to say, I do have to say one thing about the, um, ecumenical nature of the Armenian community. I am so pleased that, um, many Armenians understand that to maintain awareness of the Genocide, and we’re struggling against a behemoth that still wants to rewrite history, you have to insert yourself in some many communities. You can’t just be talking to yourself. So, I was really pleased at the Artsakh demonstration last week when we were in front of the state house, to hear this wonderful, articulate young woman, I have already forgotten her name, speak about the issue. And then later on, I found out because I was talking to Carolyn Mugar, who was there too, that her father is the owner of Eastern Lamejun.
01:10:38
GJ: Oh, wow.
01:10:40 - 01:11:07
JN: So, um, and she must probably work there sometimes. I know the family helps out a lot. And that the father has made it a point to foster that kind of activism in his own family. Not just have a business that’s successful. The same is true of all of the Armenian stores in Watertown. When we were doing Women Again at Ararat, and if you haven’t seen that play you must.
01:11:07 - 01:12:22
JN: It’s a beautiful play written by a woman who came to the AIWA, and we produced it. We showed it at the Mosesian Theater, maybe 2015, 2016, now I think it was around then. And I went to every single one of the stores there to get free food for the reception, because of course we are going to have everybody there after the conversation and you know have a reception upstairs. They have a nice big room for a reception. And every single one of the guys who own those stores was very generous with what they gave me. They were, you know, listed as sponsors and were thanked in the program. But I just loved the way the community rallied around something like this, this. And the way this story is told, is so beautifully done that it makes it palatable to a very large audience, a non-Armenian audience as well. And I am hoping that Women of Araratwill get produced again and again. I would love to see a film of a production.
01:12:23 -  01:13:56
JN: You know, that’s happening more and more. There is an amazing woman who does these one-woman shows. She did one about Rachel Carson called A Sense of Wonder and you know, it was performed a lot, mostly on college campuses. And then, WGBH, with PBS television got wind of it and said, “Oh you must do a documentary.” So, they filmed it. It aired on PBS, and now it’s being shown as a film all over Nova again. She recently did the same with Mother Jones and she did a one-woman performance that was at Northeastern and a few other places, I can’t remember, around here called Can’t Scare Me. And more recently, she got a benefactress who said, “No, no, no, we have to do another film.” So, the film by a different title, Fight Like Hell, just premiered in Washington a couple of weeks ago with the first ever woman President of the AFL-CIO speaking afterwards. And we’re going to be co-hosting, Fight Like Hell, here in Boston soon. You know, having its premier, Boston premier. That’s the kind of thing I want to see happen with Women of Ararat. I want to see a really good production filmed, and then a documentary made of it. Because this is going to be one of the ways we help keep alive the truth about the Armenian Genocide.

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