VARTABEDIAN: A LIFETIME OF CHICO MEMORIES
By Mary Nugent – Staff Writer
Enterprise-Record, CA
Nov 18 2006
A resident at a Chico retirement facility, Vart Vartabedian took
little time Nov. 14 to talk…"1"
Vartkes "Vart" Vartabedian clearly remembers something that happened
when he was 9 years old and selling newspapers on Third Street,
between Main and Broadway in Chico.
"This guy bought a paper and he gave me a $5 gold piece. I didn’t
have change, so I ran around the corner to my father’s business for
change. And that was that.
"Then years later when my father passed away, we found that $5 gold
piece in a safe deposit box. I had forgotten all about it. He saved
it for me; I had it made into a pendant for my wife."
At 96, Vart Vartabedian has a lot of memories. Sometimes they’re
poignant, or funny — but his memories are lucid and detailed.
Vartabedian was born in 1910 in Chicago, Ill., to Armenian parents
who arrived in the U.S. through Ellis Island. Big city Chicago was
a rough transition after the small villages in Armenia.
"Lock, stock and barrel, with two kids and everything they owned,
they took a train west," Vartabedian recalled. They had seen Butte
County on a map, and settled in Chico.
"My father had a little shop in Chicago — he was a hatter,"
Vartabedian said, describing the profession of cleaning and remodeling
men’s hats in a big city where hats got grimy.
Hats didn’t get so dirty in rural Chico,and over time, his father
revamped his business to include cleaning gloves and umbrellas.
"People walked everywhere, and you had to have an umbrella,"
Vartabedian said.
"My parents raised four children on 2.5 acres on East Eighth Street.
We had a nice garden, cows and chickens."
He remembers his mother and Annie Bidwell had the same doctor. "The
doctor knew my mother made yogurt and he told Mrs. Bidwell about it.
She came in a horse and buggy with her Indian driver. I saw her get
out of the rig, and my mother gave her a container of yogurt."
He also recalls when Annie Bidwell died in 1918. "My school
participated in the funeral. I remember walking with a bunch of
flowers. I was pretty young."
And there was yet another incident he remembers. "I was 6 or 7 and on
my way home. I’d go through the (Bidwell) park, at the Fourth Street
entrance. The park was very overgrown then, very wild. I broke off
a piece of a grape vine, struck a match and was going to smoke it
— and I felt a hand on my shoulder — it was the hand of a big,
heavy-set woman who lived on the corner. She asked me if I wanted
her to tell my mother … I put that grape vine out quickly."
He graduated from Chico High School in 1928 and after working for a
time with his father, Vartabedian went into the wholesale cleaning
business with the late Henry Usherwood. They worked together in
partnership for 25 years, then Vartabedian bought him out.
"The cleaners was at 231 Main Street, what is now the Garden Walk. I
ran it for 50 years and retired in 1980."
Vartabedian and his wife, Jean, have been married for 62 years. They
met during a dance at the hotel at Richardson Springs. He was in the
Air Force and she married another man, also in the Air Force.
"He was a flyer and he was killed during World War II," he recalled,
and said Jean had a little girl. Vartabedian married her, raised her
daughter, and together they had three more children.
"There are so many good memories," he said. "I remember something
humorous, one Thanksgiving. We had a big table with a lot of family
sitting around it. I was at the end of the table and my wife set the
turkey on it. The table tipped, and the turkey landed on my lap. The
whole thing. It was pretty funny."
He remembers the streetcar than ran through downtown Chico, and the
dances at Portuguese Hall, Memorial Hall, and down by the Sacramento
River.
Vartabedian lives at a retirement community, and his wife has gone
to a nursing home. "We used to like to travel in our RV. We really
enjoyed ourselves," he said.
They have eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, and a
few associated as step-grandchildren, he said.
Vartabedian says there is nothing complicated about why he is living
such a long, healthy life. "Good genes. That’s it."
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