Boston Herald, MA
April 12 2008

Like `Mr. Jumbo,’ we’ll never forget

By Joe Fitzgerald
Saturday, April 12, 2008

This one’s for John Baronian, who was 87 when he died a week ago
today.

If he’d had a nom de plume, which he didn’t because there was nothing
pretentious about him, it would have been Mister Jumbo, for Tufts
University never had a more zealous tub-thumper than this ardent
alumnus from its class of 1950.

John loved everything about his alma mater, which is why he also
tooted the Herald’s horn because its sports pages were graced by the
elegant prose of Tim Horgan and Tony Massarotti, his fellow alumni.

He was the life of every party he attended, including the annual
Johnny Pesky Friendship Dinner, where his anecdotes kept the laughs
coming at his table.

But there was a greater passion that burned within him, an imperative
to share a message transcending all of the causes and loves that
defined him, and this is written with the certainty John’s dying wish
would have been that this message did not die with him.

So once again, here it is, in his own words.

John, an Armenian born in America, wanted the world to acknowledge
and remember the atrocities inflicted upon his people by the Turkish
government during a 1915 genocide that resulted in 1.5 million
deaths.

As recently as eight months ago, when the Anti-Defamation League lent
its weight to history’s whitewash of that bloodbath, John was telling
his story to anyone who would listen.

`My parents lived in Turkey in a place called Harput,’ he said. `My
father was a farmer. Armenians had lived there for centuries. It was
like a kingdom with its own symbol, Mount Ararat.

`When the genocide began, the Turks were immediately brutal. Women
were beaten and raped by the soldiers while men were hanged in the
square or shot in the woods. My uncle and grandfather were taken to
those woods and shot to death, just for being Armenians. That was all
the reason the Turks needed.

`Then came the death march. That’s what we call it, though the Turks
called it a relocation march, which was ridiculous, because thousands
were forced into the Der El Zor desert with no water, no food, no
anything.

`My mother was among them with her three little children, all under
5: My sisters, Helen and Azadouhi, and my brother, Sirak. All around
her, people were dying needlessly while her own children kept crying
from hunger and thirst until they died, too.’

John, who would be raised in Medford, serve in the Pacific during
World War II, and enjoy success in the insurance industry, never
forgot his heritage, even as he was living the American dream.

Sarah Baronian’s anguish never subsided.

`I can still see her crying,’ he once recalled. `She would try to
hide it, but we’d catch her all the time; whenever she’d try to talk
about it she’d break down and cry again, unable to continue. She
could hear the voices of those little kids, the sisters and brother I
never knew, pleading for something to eat or drink as they died in
her arms in the desert.’

And then, invariably, he would add this afterthought.

`Just before he began slaughtering Jews, Hitler asked, `Who remembers
what happened to the Armenians?’ In other words, people will
eventually forget whatever you do.

`I can assure you, Armenians have never forgotten. And that’s why I
tell this story. God forbid anyone forgets.’

In John’s memory, it will continue to be shared here.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress