1989_12 Hye Sharzhoom Newspaper December 1989

              Armenia: One Year After Tragic Quake ...see pages 4,6, and ?
4U.8 eupd-nhir
Hye Sharzhoom
&    The Newspaper of the California State University, Fresno
Armenian Students Organization and Armenian Studies Program
Fresno, CA 93740
Supplement to the Daily Collegian
December 1989
Volume 11, No. 2
Non-ProfIt Org.
U.S. Postage
PAID
Permit No. 262
Address Correction Requested
Jews fight for Armenian Genocide
By Dickran Kouymjian
Haig and Isabel Berberian
Professor of Armenian Studies
Thanks to Rabbi Kenneth Segel of
Fresno and Jews of his Temple Beth
Israel the struggle to have the world
unequivocally acknowledge the genocide suffered by the Armenian nation
during World War I has moved forward
in a dramatic fashion.
American Jews have asserted with
insistence that Armenians suffered a
genocide at the hands of the Turkish
government of 1915 and have urged
Jews throughout North America to
lobby actively for the passage of
Senate Joint Resolution 212 proclaiming April 24, 1990 as the
"National Day of Remembrance of the
75th Anniversary of the Armenian
Genocide of 1915-1923."
The bi-annual convention of the
Union of American Hebrew Congregations, representing some 810
Jewish communities throughout the
U.S. and Canada, more than a million
and a half of America's five and a half
million Jews and the largest Jewish
group in the country, passed unanimously a remarkable "Armenian
Genocide Resolution" in New Orleans
on Monday, November 7, 1989. In
addition to instructing his own
Religious Action Center in Washington to encourage passage of the
Senate resolution, the UAHC also
Rabbi Kenneth I. Segel of Temple Beth Israel addressing the Armenian commended the executive committee
community at a reception held in his honor on November 16th. On the left, of   the   U.S.    Holocaust   Memorial
Richard Darmanian of the Armenian National Committee who hosted the event.        Museum to include reference to the
Photo courtesy of Viken Abrijian
Armenian horticulturalist and Endowed Chair donor
loses family land battle to Clovis School District
By Sheri Hokokian
Staff Writer
Valley horticulturalist and fruit
grower John Garabedian, 80, lost 17
acres of his land and over 2,000
experimental trees because they were
chain sawed on August 23,1989.
Garabedian, who attended Clovis
schools as a young boy, has been
fighting with the Clovis Unified
School District for more than two
years over the building of a new
school on a site located along Fowler
Avenue west of Kings Canyon.
In a "free land" offer, Garabedian had
offered to give the district another 17
acres that he owns across the street for
the Francher Creek elementary school
site and give the city of Fresno any
five acres for a city park site. In
addition, he offered both CUSD and
Fresno city up to $50,000 each in
developing fees.
Garabedian, a major donor to the
Armenian CSUF Endowed Chair, has
been on opposing sides with the
school district since April 1987 when
the School Board gave its approval for
condemnation of the property.
The Fresno Bee reported that
Garabedian sought nearly $3
million for the parcel, which included
$1,676,000 as the value of the land,
$106,000 in severance damages for
new wells and irrigation pipelines that
Garabedian said had to be constructed,
and $1,006,000 in damages to the rest
of his property.
However, after both parties paid
over $500,000 in legal fees a Fresno
County Superior Court judge ruled in
favor of CUSD and a jury set the value
of the land at $888,531.
"It would have been cheaper for
them to go across the street because
they wouldn't have had to pay for the
removal of the trees," Garabedian said.
Garabedian was born on a ranch in
Malaga in 1909 as an only child.
His father died when he was three. At
16 Garabedian began driving a tractor
and pruning trees on the Golden Dawn
Ranch owned by George Roeding.
Roeding, who was a master plant
breeder, taught John at a young age to
graft and bud fruit trees.
Garabedian said that Roeding sent
people back to the old country,
Armenia, to bring different plant
varieties back to California.
Over 15,000 different varieties of
fruit are being developed on
Garabedian's 170 acre ranch south of
the school site.
The city wants to put a shopping
center on his vacant "free land" but
Garabedian said he doesn't need any
money so he will not sell the land or
industrialize it. He plans to plant trees
and orchards on the land.
A past resident of Madera,
Garabedian owned many ranches and a
packing house on the Santa Fe
Railroad, which he operated until 15
years ago when he transi erred his main
business to Fresno.
In April of 1980 Garabedian was
officially proclaimed by the state
legislature as a "latter day Luther
Burbank" of the San Joaquin Valley.
Garabedian is a past Republican
chairman of Fresno County. He has
served on the California Board of Food
and Agriculture and has helped other
countries by donating some of his fruit
varieties to improve their agricultural
production. He has been a major donor
to Valley Children's Hospital.
The seizure of the Garabedian land
by the Clovis School Board through
eminent domain has been a major
source of controversy in Fresno over
the past months. According to Dr.
Dickran Kouymjian, Haig and Isabel
Berberian Professor of Armenian
Studies, many valley residents
sympathize with Garabedian and feel
he has been a victim of bureaucratic
stubbornness and stupidity.
Armenian genocide in its display, and,
finally, to educate members of all
Jewish Reform Congregations "to the
facts and the lessons of [other
genocides]."
This historic resolution becomes
the fourth major document of this
decade to focus on the Armenian
Genocide and ask for its international
recognition. The other three are 1) the
Verdict of the Permanent Peoples'
Tribunal session on the Armenian
Genocide issued in Paris on April 16,
1984, 2) Paragraph 24 of the Report of
the United Nations Sub-Commission
on Prevention of Discrimination and
Protection of Minorities, passed on
August 29, 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland and 3) the 15 point resolution
voted by the European Parliament in
Strasbourg, France on June 18, 1987
condemning the genocide perpetrated
against the Armenians and calling on
the Turkish government to acknowledge it
Rabbi Segel and Marc Wilson,
President of the Temple Beth Israel
Congregation, headed a delegation,
which left Fresno armed with a
resolution on the Armenian genocide
and a suitcase of information on the
Armenian tragedy supplied by or
through the Armenian Studies Program
of California State University, Fresno.
In a press conference held before the
Fresno representation departed for New
Orleans, Rabbi Segel declared that if
the Convention did not pass the
resolution presented by Temple Beth
Israel, he and his co-delegates were
see JEWS, page 8
/^Archbishop to speak^
on music of Gomidas
"Arnienian Culture and the Songs of
Gomidas" will be the lecture topic that
Archbishop Torkom Manoogian,
Primate of the Eastern Diocese of the
Armenian Church of America, will
give on Tuesday, December 12 in the
CSUF Satellite Student Union at 7:30
p.m,
He is the author of several works on
sacred music of the Armenian Church,
along with being an authority on the
musician-priest Gomidas Vartabed. In
1982, Archbishop Manoogian appeared on a C.B.S. televised program
emitted; ''For Our Times--the Voice of
Armenia," a program particularly
about sacred music of the church.
Archbishop Manoogian was invited
by CSUF as part of the University
Lecture Series, Admission for the
evenings lecture will be $2 for
students, faculty and staff, and $3 for
all Others interested,
Prior to the lecture; the CSUF
Armenian Studies Program will hold
it's fourth annual banquet with Archbishop Manoogian presiding as guest
of honor. Social hour will begin at 5
p.m. with dinner following. Twenty-
five dollar tickets are available by
calling the ASP office at 294-2669.