Sisters Academy of Radnor Remembers Genocide

By Melissa Selverian

"The Armenian Weekly", Volume 74, No. 18, May 3, 2007

“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.