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Sisters Academy of Radnor Remembers
Genocide
By Melissa Selverian
 “Our children are the answer to Shakespeare’s question: To
be or not to be?” said an inspired clergyman at the Armenian
Sisters Academy in Radnor, Pa., as he bore witness to the
youths’ resounding “to be!” 93 years after the attempted
annihilation of their race in the first genocide of the 20th
century.
Students demonstrated to the world that Armenians are
flourishing by planting seeds of renewal in the form of
colorful blossoms on the school’s front lawn at the
academy’s annual genocide commemoration on April 24. The
Very Rev. Fr. Mkrtich Proshyan of Sts. Sahag-Mesrob Armenian
Church of Wynnewood, Pa., said it was a fitting tribute to
the one and a half million Armenians slain and exiled by the
Ottoman Turks in 1915, as the children are “the flowers of
the garden of the Armenian people…of our life.”
School principal Sister Louisa Kassarjian echoed the
pastor’s words, calling on the Armenian community to nurture
its growth by perpetuating the ancestral language, culture,
and traditions, as the school has done for 40 years.
Students ages 2 to 15 stood tall as they led an auditorium
of family, friends, faculty, and clergy in song, recitation,
and prayer in memory of the fallen men, women, and children
who held fast to their Armenian Christian heritage as they
were forcibly removed from their homes, assassinated,
starved to death along desert marches, raped, mutilated, and
murdered en mass.
At the start of the Armenian Genocide in 1915, Armenian
professionals were kidnapped first, arrested and ultimately
killed. The oldest Academy students, led by their Armenian
teacher Tamar Panosian, paid special tribute to the literary
greats of the day, who gave their lives telling the Armenian
story. Great novelists, poets, journalists, and musicians
took center stage, including Siamanto, who wrote extensively
of the massacres, and the bishop Gomidas, the father of the
Armenian liturgical music, who yielded mentally and
physically to the weight of witnessing in shocking detail
the atrocities of the period. His and his people’s
unrelenting faith amid unspeakable pain can be heard today
each Sunday in churches throughout the world.
Together, the Very Rev. Fr. Proshyan of St. Sahag and St.
Mesrob Armenian Apostolic Church of Wynnewood, the Very Rev.
Fr. Armenag Bedrossian of St. Mark’s Armenian Catholic
Church of Wynnewood, and the Rev. L. Nishan Bakalian of
Armenian Martyrs’ Congregational Church of Havertown led a
requiem service in memory of all the genocide victims.
Children placed red and green ribbons on a cross and sang
solemn songs in the martyrs’ honor, including “Hankchetsek”
(Rest fallen souls), “Voghtchooyn Tsezee” (Kiss of peace to
you), the Lord’s prayer, and the Armenian and American
national anthems. Academy musical director Maroush
Paneyan-Nigon accompanied on piano.
Academy students also joined hundreds of Armenians on the
steps of the Art Museum of Philadelphia and in a two-mile
walk along Kelly Drive on April 26 to remember their fallen
sisters and brothers and pledge their commitment to
acquiring a formal national acknowledgment of the horrific
episode in history.
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