The Long & Winding Road

Almost five years ago, when I unknowingly began my journey back to my childhood Armenian church before it closed forever, I began experiencing a series of little miracles.

The first miracle was the call itself. My elderly cousin interacted periodically with my older sister but had never, that I can recall, contacted me. He called me with a purpose. He was helping another cousin with an ancestry search of the Armenian side of our family, and he had run across a name from our shared grandfather’s generation that he had never heard. Would I see if I could find anything, perhaps in church records and/or county records.

The next miracle was locating the church records. The Armenian church which we attended through my childhood and early adulthood was closed–had not held a service since 2011. Finding the records required a series of mini miracles. I hadn’t had contact with anyone from the church in decades, so I had no idea who to contact. There was one minister, back in the ‘90s, whom I knew from my years in the Armenian Protestant Youth Fellowship. I had no idea where she was, but I thought if she still was an active minister, I probably could find her online. Miracle number three was finding an email address for her and successfully making contact.

She had indeed maintained contact with some of the church members, and let me know who, if anyone, could help me. The church building was for sale, and two brothers had taken on the responsibility for keeping it intact while it was awaiting a buyer. I called one of the brothers, who had no idea where the records were. He said another member had tried to find them for an ancestry search and had not been successful. But miracle number four: he graciously agreed to let me into the church.

My first visit (of many, it turned out) to my childhood church was shocking and depressing. It was dirty and smelly and in total disarray. Something told me to look in the office first—although it seemed likely that the other member had done that. Miracle number five was finding the three volumes of church records almost immediately!

I obtained permission to borrow the volumes for a week or two, since I didn’t want to hold up the man who so generously came to the church to let me in. And miracle five was the effect studying the records had on me—a revival of my positive memories of the church and the people I knew. I felt compelled to write the story of the church—but I would need access to other documents and to the church building for research. Sam, the man who let me in the first time, agreed to have a key made for me so he wouldn’t have to let me in every time.

As my connection blossomed, so did my drive to give the church a meaningful closure. When I mentioned that to Sam, he said the church was in such bad shape, it would be impossible to make it suitable for a service. I decided to prove him wrong. I spent multiple visits there cleaning the vestibule and office to show the potential for just the cost of some cleaning supplies and elbow grease, which I gladly would contribute. I asked Sam and his brother – and another man, Tom, who was helping with the logistics of the sale – to meet me there for a proposal. The vestibule positively gleamed, the old oak polished to a high sheen, the rug cleaned, and the furniture washed and waxed. With the doors to the sanctuary closed, you couldn’t tell that this was a part of the original dirty, smelly church I viewed on my first visit.

Miracle number six was not just their agreement, but genuine enthusiasm.

From that point on, the project proved that it was meant to be. As other members of the church heard about this, some volunteered to help with the cleaning and preparations. Another volunteered to prepare a booklet of stories and photos and history and memories to hand out when the closure service was held. Then there was a woman who was related to many of the members, although she wasn’t a church member herself. She had such favorable memories of those members and the occasional visits to the church, she volunteered to arrange for a video to be made of the service and a group photo taken. And the former minister, who was unable to be with us on the day of the service, provided an audiotape with her own message. The Armenian Missionary Association of America helped us find an Armenian minister to lead the service. And a church member tracked down someone who could get the organ working and an organist to provide the music at the service.

The members aimed for early 2020 for the service. But as we all remember, Covid hit and impacted any gatherings. Undaunted, the service was scheduled for September of that year. It featured a baptism, which provided a bookend to the church’s first baptism in 1906.

There have been some setbacks since then that slowed progress on my story of the church and the Armenians who founded it. But those setbacks also gave me time to make changes in my approach: divide the nearly 140-year history from conception of the Armenian church in Troy through the closure service into two stories. The first is planned as a memoir, covering the final years. The second is planned to be historical fiction, beginning with the Armenians leaving their homeland that was no longer safe for them, through the founding and tumultuous first fifteen years of the United Armenian Calvary Congregational Church of Troy, NY.

Stay tuned for updates!

A CHURCH IS BORN

Church members celebrate groundbreaking of first church

Following the early genocide of Armenians in Turkey from 1895-1897, a stream of Armenians flowed into the city of Troy, NY. Their goal from the time they left Turkey was to create a church as their center for worship and social connections. They worshipped in homes and borrowed spaces until they were able to build their own church. With financial help from the Presbytery and Congregational Churches, whose missionaries had a strong presence in Turkey, Troy’s Armenian Presbyterian Church was founded in 1906, and the Congregational Church was built in 1916 to meet the growing needs of the congregation

Reports of continual slaughter, exile, and the attempted extermination of all Armenians in Turkey brought the two Armenian churches in Troy together and inspired a new name for the church in 1919: The United Armenian Calvary Congregational Church, in commemoration of a martyred nation. Memorial tributes were included in the stained glass windows of the new sanctuary church, and the other church building was converted for use as a parsonage. The local Armenian Apostolic churches affectionately called it “the Ninth Street Church,” a name they continued to use through the life of the church.

Original leaders of the “Ninth Street Church”: Migrants from Turkey were predominantly men originally, and they brought their wives and families over as they settled in and found employment. (Note: my grandfather, who died before I was born, is in first row, far left.)

One member told me most of the church women were employed by Cluett’s, a shirt factory in Troy. Some worked at the factory. But for those who had to be at home, a man made rounds every day with a horse and wagon, dropping off and picking up shirts in progress. Each woman had a specialty: collars, cuffs, buttons, buttonholes, etc., and eventually the shirts would be completed and sold. Many other fascinating (and funny) stories were shared by offspring of the Cluett’s Armenian women. When they weren’t sewing or keeping the home going and taking care of children, they were at the church (often with the children), where there always was something to do and someone to be helped. Another member shared that “although there was a lot of drama involved, the community was close knit and helped each other. The church was the center of social life and provided refuge and support for Genocide survivors who never really healed.

Circa early 1930’s—The Ladies Aid Members: Backbone of the Church

Under Reverend Rejebian and dedicated successors (see list at end), the church flourished, as did the Protestant Armenian community in Troy into the 21st century. One member, now deceased, spoke fondly of her youthful church experiences in the early to mid-thirties, particularly of Christian Endeavor, a youth group that engaged youth and teens in activities that helped the church and the community and bonded the members into adulthood. She described the physical changes to the church structure as it evolved from her earliest memories to when the new church hall was added in the 1950’s.

A new church hall was added in the mid-fifties

Dedicated members, committed Ladies Aid, a vigorous Sunday School and strong leadership kept the congregation growing and thriving up to the close of the 20th century. In 2001, the congregation celebrated their 95th anniversary.

Late 40’s/early 50’s: A growing and thriving Sunday School: Future Church Leaders

I have so many memories: of Sunday School picnics, rummage sales to raise funds, Christmas pageants; a trip to NYC to tour Riverside Church; singing in the choir; excursions with the youth fellowship members, and the conferences of the Armenian Protestant Youth Fellowship throughout the northeast. (One of my friends from the conferences became a minister and led our church from the late eighties through the late nineties: Reverend Joanne Gulezian-Hartunian.) And, of course, the many food events. Nothing was more welcoming than a food event hosted by the church members. Two of the favorites were the Strawberry Festival and the annual Armenian Smorgasbord. Both packed the hall, requiring massive preparations.

In the nineties this author witnessed a revival under Rev. Joanne Hartunian while attending an Easter service: the full pews, robust choir and participation by children mirrored holiday services of decades before.

Alas, with changing times, aging leaders, and increasingly mobile members, the church followed in the footsteps of so many others, holding their last regular service in 2011.

Prior to the sale of the building in 2020, a group of members organized a fitting closure service for their much-loved church. The Rev. Dr. Avedis Boynerian of Watertown Armenian Memorial Church officiated. A baby was baptized. Reverend Joanne Hartunian recorded a message for the closure service titled “You Are The Church.”

The church was converted into luxury apartments the following year, a structure named ”The Chapel Apartments”.

The proceeds from the sale of the church were distributed to the remaining two Troy area Armenian churches and to local and national Armenian projects and associations.

The former internal church structure is gone, but the beloved United Armenian Calvary Congregational Church structure stands tall on the corner of Ninth and Eagle in Troy, NY and remains in our hearts forever.

WAGING THE AGING BATTLES GRACEFULLY

As we enter the uncertainties of 2024, we hope and pray for the best for our country, our family, and our friends. We wish a safe, peaceful, healthy and happy new year to all.

When I was young (any time before 60😊), I felt pretty much invincible, physically. I had no serious health issues. I “ran” (slowly) in multiple marathons, half marathons and shorter races. I was successful in some jobs and a total bust in others. My husband and I did a lot of camping and long-distance canoeing—and even a few races.

I was mostly an honorable person, but I did some things I wish I had done differently. I had a temper in my youth that now (in my seventies) seems like it belonged to a different person. I regret that I fell out of the practice of participating in a church—it’s not too late yet. I will forever regret that we made self-centered choices when both my mother and my husband’s mother needed us to keep them out of nursing homes. We made some terrible financial decisions that significantly reduced the size of the nest egg we might have had now, had we taken some different turns.

I wrote five novels and self-published four of those. Why didn’t I publish the fifth one? I didn’t have the b—- (kahunas) to deal with the controversies. I’ve been working on another for three years and am nowhere near the end. I keep re-writing the same 15 chapters over and over. I haven’t defined the reason for that. I hope it’s not that I haven’t grown beyond the reasons that kept me from publishing the fifth book.

Since 2016, my body has slowly begun to remind me that I’m not invincible, that my age IS a factor in what I can or can’t do. Five bleeding ulcers while training for a marathon and living on ibuprofen.  A heart attack in 2020. Couple of broken bones (dates elude me). Cataracts that miraculously, when removed, left me not requiring glasses for the first time since kindergarten. Another bleeding ulcer last year (and not even consuming ibuprofen this time). And most recently, paralysis of my left fourth optic nerve that results in seeing double and distorted (second image is elevated and angled – pretty fascinating if you’re not trying to walk, drive and negotiate steps safely).  Most scary is the inconsistent memory and concentration challenges – not really a big deal except when you factor in the family history of Alzheimers.

Getting old is NOT for the weak.

But around all the downers, life has been good. My husband and I are both still here, still getting to the gym regularly, eating a decent (not perfect) diet, enjoying friends and our Russell Terrier, Dubby. We aren’t world travelers but enjoy visiting friends and family and spending time in the Adirondacks with our canoe.

As we enter the uncertainties of 2024, we hope and pray for the best for our country, our family, and our friends. We wish a safe, peaceful, healthy and happy new year to all.

Farewell to “The Ninth Street Church”

This post is an update on one posted a couple of years ago. I was asked to write an article about the church’s history for a magazine, and it brought me back to this one. I expanded on it considerably, and will post it when it’s officially published (which could be 6-12 months from now). But I decided to revisit this one in the meantime.

Saturday morning, September 26, 2020, dawned cool but promising sunshine, a very positive start for celebrating the 114 year history of the United Armenian Calvary Congregational Church (UACCC) in Troy, NY. It was bittersweet, since it also marked the final service of the church. Sixty-seven members turned out both to celebrate the church and say goodbye.

The service was officiated by Rev. Dr. Avedis Boynerian, pastor of the Armenian Memorial Church in Watertown, MA and member of the AMAA Board of Directors. Special messages on the occasion from the AEWC and the AMAA were read. Rev. Boynerian’s message, Got Is Not Done Yet, recognized the church’s long and active history and the church founders, who fled the massacres in Turkey and arrived in America intent on making new lives and building a new church community.

Participants in the service also received a recorded message from Rev. Joanne Gulezian-Hartunian, who served the church during much of the 1990’s. Her message was You Are The Church. She shared memories of church dinners and Sunday School activities and a growth of the congregation during her time there, and urged members to gather together in the future.

David Vredenberg, member of the American Guild of Organists, was guest Organist.

A very moving and symbolic point in the service was a baptism. The first baby baptized in the UACCC community was Haiganoosh H. Abajian, on September 16, 1906, as recorded in the church records. The baptism of Raffi Allan George Chalian provided a joyous and hopeful note to this final service. Together, the two baptisms became bookends for the spiritual life of the church.

At the closure of the service, attendees gathered at the altar for a group photo, followed by a COVID-friendly reception. A history table dating back to the earliest days and photos reminded all of the experiences and spiritual strength the church provided its members for 114 years.

The church was converted to apartments the following year. The familiar internal church structure is gone, but the exterior looks pretty much the same, and the beloved United Armenian Calvary Congregational Church remains in the members’ hearts forever.

WEBSITE GLITCH

This quick message is just to let all know that there’s an issue with my website, http://www.dawnlajeunesse.com. Seems it has crashed. I have a message out to my contact at GoDaddy, and hopefully this will be resolved quickly.

Meanwhile, here’s an update on coming attractions. In the next few months, I anticipate some changes to my website, including photos that aren’t almost 10 years old. The format will remain the same, with the same links to other sites.

Also, the Armenian Mirror Spectator recipe corner has requested that I submit another recipe and story, as the first one was quite popular. I’m considering the origin (my childhood church, of course) and recipe for the shish kebab that evolved from my church memories.

THE JOURNEY CONTINUES…

Although I’m far from the finish line with my historical fiction about the Armenians in Troy, NY who founded the only Protestant Armenian church in upstate NY, I take a semi-break sometimes to do research on best practices for querying potential publishers when the time comes. Last week I ventured into my first experiment with AI when I used Chatgpt to help me find comps to use in a query letter. I had some stumbles at first, since I was new to what could be offered. It took four tries to get to actual books with relevance AND were fairly recent. That fourth try produced five books published in the last 15 years, two of which I have read and found helpful. None of them were within the last five years. But given my fairly obscure topic, I wasn’t surprised. It’s not like every historical fiction writer would be clamoring to write about Troy’s Armenians over a hundred years ago.

One, published in 2016, sounded familiar. I waded through the many books I’ve collected since I started this journey and found a copy of The Hundred Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey by Dawn Anahid MacKeen.

Like too many of the books on my resource shelves, I hadn’t read it. I’m perpetually torn between research and writing, which has become a real-life chicken and egg challenge with my novel. MacKeen’s book focused on the genocide that began in 1915, although the Armenians in their homeland were under intermittent attacks before that. My grandfather left his home village for America (with an intervening stay in France) in 1893, just before one of the earliest periods of attacks on the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire known as the Hamidian massacres. The estimated casualties for that period ranged from 100,000 to 300,000 and resulted in 50,000 orphaned children. There were other attacks intermittently between this and the more well-known genocide that began in 1915 and killed between 1.2 and 1.5 million Armenians, with the official Ottoman number at 1,251,785 (even though they deny it happened).

 While Searching for Setrik, the current title of my novel, focuses on the Troy, NY Armenians who arrived before the genocide, the church that is a focus in the story played a role in welcoming and supporting the arriving Armenian survivors of the genocide and the reconciliation of the two Protestant Armenian churches that had split in 1910. The Hundred Year Walk provided me with an intense vision of what those arriving Armenians had survived and clarified with specificity the need for all of Troy’s Armenians to nurse the refugees back to health—physically, and to the extent possible, emotionally.

I have a feeling this won’t be the last detour I make in writing this novel. But I hope any others provide an equivalent in insights to make my novel the best it can be.

My Lahmajoun Recipe…

FEATURED IN The Armenian Mirror Spectator!!!

Recipe Corner: Dawn Essegian Lajeunesse’s Lahmajoun

THE JOURNEY CONTINUES

It’s getting embarrassing, writing yet another post about my work on the historical fiction about the Armenians who immigrated and settled in Troy, NY, and founded the Protestant Armenian church where I grew up. You would think being retired would allow me to focus entirely on this project. Yet I’ve discovered a multitude of interests and friends in retirement that pull me away from the leisure of writing daily. One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to carve out at least a few hours daily to move my story forward. I’m still trying to make that resolution work. In my defense, I’ve had some health issues, as has my husband, and that combination has taken up too much of my time. But things are looking up now, and I aim to move my story beyond Chapter 13.

Another challenge for me is dealing with names – many of my characters are based very loosely on actual people. Since I don’t know their stories in detail and can’t prove them as factual – and since all of the original church founders are long gone – do I have the right to use actual names or should I create new names for all characters? So far I’ve used real names, but they are in red so I can go back and make changes if/when needed.

I sometimes get bogged down in the details – is it better to just get the story line written and go back later to flesh out descriptions and character personalities? Or will who the individuals are be critical to how the story flows?

I’ve re-written the early chapters multiple times. Should I just stop reading what’s already written until the whole story draft is completed, then go back and flesh it out further?

It hasn’t helped that my time has been pilfered by way too many commitments – some planned, some unexpected but essential.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it—just like I’m sticking to my commitment to complete this intriguing story. That’s not self-praise. The story of Troy’s early Armenian Protestants really is amazing.

Church members at the groundbreaking of the original Protestant Armenian church in Troy, NY.

RESPECT FOR HISTORICAL FICTION WRITERS!

I don’t update nearly enough on how my book is progressing on the Armenians who immigrated to and settled in Troy, NY and founded the Protestant Armenian church there. I’ll do a bit of an update here, but first I want to broadcast my immense respect for writers of historical fiction. I’m aiming that at the many writers who produce new historical novels on a fairly frequent basis. Mine has taken almost 3 years so far for a first draft–and is maybe 1/3 completed. It borders on embarrassing. I say “borders on” because I’ve been learning just how challenging it is to write a story that solidly hooks a reader and both reflects and respects the history it is based on.

What triggers a story idea for a prolific and successful historical fiction writer? Do they work from real or imagined historical figures? Or create their own characters to populate a story about a point in time?

Perhaps each writer of historical fiction (I’ve read several in recent years) takes a different approach. I’d love to get inside the heads of those who have created some of my favorites. Do they spend long hours researching the time period and geographic location of their story and then build the story around that? I picture thick notebooks full of reference material. (Or loaded computer files). How do they smoothly and naturally weave that factual background into and around the lives of the characters who populate the story?

Maybe some write the story first, and then flesh it out with historical details? Do they know everything about their characters in advance, or do they let the characters help write the story and grow their own personalities as the story progresses?

I live with my story every day. The basics are all in my head and in volumes of notes. Maybe I should just get the whole story written, then go back and flesh out personalities and place with life experiences and personal challenges and life happening around them.

Comments and recommendations welcome!

So Many Resources, So Little Time

I’m making progress on my story about Troy’s Armenians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it is painfully slow. And not from lack of commitment, but rather from new solid gold resources popping up just when I’m settling into the next chapter of the story.

I’ve received all kinds of advice on how to manage this dilemma. The predominant one is just write the story and flesh it out with what is in all the resources later. That’s counterintuitive to me. Up to this point I have stopped when a new resource came to my attention. My reasoning? Many of the resources I’ve tapped up to this point have taken my story – or a chapter of my story – in a different direction that I’ve found valuable. Or a resource could change the tone of even a single chapter or story line. In other words, the new resources have nearly always enriched the story. How could I possibly not give each resource its due.

One recent new set of resources was loaned to me by the priest at the local Armenian Apostolic church, St. Peter’s in Watervliet. Although Searching for Setrik focuses on the Armenians in Troy who founded the protestant Armenian Church, all of the Armenians who settled in the Troy area have stories in common. So examining the experiences that my ancestors had in common beyond the church — as Armenian refugees from their ancestral homeland, as survivors of horrors at the hands of the Turks and Kurds — provides a richer and more comprehensive understanding of their lives, not just their lives within a specific church but also their adapting to life in upstate NYS.

I do have to remind myself periodically that I’m not writing a history book. I’m writing historical fiction. But how can you paint a rich picture of the characters and the settings in the story without having a comprehensive understanding of their lives both in and out of their chosen church?

So I keep pursuing the new angles, absorbing the details of their lives…

And reminding myself that my ultimate goal is to finish the story!