Chicago Tribune
Distributed by Knight/Ridder Tribune News Service
June 1, 2006 Thursday
Walter H. Vartan: 1907 – 2006Armenian genocide survivor
by Mitch Dudek, Chicago Tribune
Jun. 1–Walter H. Vartan was 8 years old in 1915 when a Turkish Army
officer announced from the center of his small hometown that all
residents had to gather their valuables and form a line.
The line, filled with Turks of Armenian descent, was ordered to begin
a four-week march through mountainous terrain during a genocidal
campaign launched by the Turkish government to rid the region of
Armenian Christians during World War I. About 1.5 million Armenians
died from forced marches and other atrocities.
Mr. Vartan lost a brother, a sister and his mother as a result of the
roundup and march. But he also gained an appreciation for the
fragility of life and a sense of how easily things could be taken
away, his son Gibby Vartan said.
“When I was 8 years old, I was running around worried about being
late to school. When my father was 8 years old, he was worrying about
whether or not he would see the light of the next day,” he said.
Mr. Vartan overcame this difficult start and lived a long and
prosperous life as a businessman in the Chicago area. He also was a
Golden Gloves champion in his youth and became a friend of Mayor
Richard J. Daley.
Mr. Vartan, 99, of the Lakeview neighborhood died Sunday, May 28, of
heart failure in the Midwest Palliative and Hospice Care Center in
Skokie.
His life began with tragedy. At the start of the march he and his
family were forced to make in 1915, Mr. Vartan’s brother Garabed, 16,
was rounded up with the rest of the men from his hometown of Harpoot
who were of fighting age. His sister Elizabeth, 14, was also taken.
The two were never heard from again, Gibby Vartan said.
Mr. Vartan’s father, Hagop, had immigrated to the United States a few
years earlier to earn money to send back to his family. His other
sister, Agnes, was forced into service in the home of a Turkish
officer, but she survived, Gibby Vartan said.
Mr. Vartan walked for four weeks with his mother, grandmother and two
brothers under the constant gaze of armed guards.
They were to march from Harpoot to Aleppo, Syria, where they would
reach the safety of refugee camps run by the French Foreign Legion.
Many people died of starvation or exposure, or at the hands of
Turkish soldiers.
One night, Mr. Vartan sneaked away from the camp with his brothers
Leo and Victor in search of food. But a Turkish soldier caught them,
Gibby Vartan recalled his father saying.
The soldier ordered two of the brothers to stand one in front of the
other, so he could shoot them with one bullet.
Before the soldier was about to pull the trigger, Mr. Vartan’s
grandmother, who noticed the missing boys and went to look for them,
appeared and appealed to the soldier to spare the lives of the boys
in exchange for money. The soldier accepted, and the march continued
the next day.
After a month of marching, the family made it to Aleppo. But upon
their arrival, his mother died from malnutrition, Gibby Vartan said.
Mr. Vartan and his surviving relatives traveled to Marseille, France,
and from there to Boston, where Mr. Vartan was reunited in about 1915
with his father, who worked in a shoe factory, Gibby Vartan said.
Mr. Vartan lived and worked in Boston, where he met his future wife,
Irene, before his family moved to Chicago about 1920 for better
economic opportunities. Mr. Vartan attended Lane Tech High School on
Chicago’s North Side while living with his family in the Little Italy
neighborhood and later in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood.
During his time at Lane Tech, Mr. Vartan was a Golden Gloves boxing
champion, and he befriended Robert Quinn, a boxer who became
Chicago’s fire commissioner. Quinn introduced to Mr. Vartan to Daley,
and the three became friends, gathering occasionally to play
handball.
Mr. Vartan worked throughout high school and years after as a
woodcarver and at a photo engraving plant.
In 1930, Mr. Vartan married Irene, and two years later, during the
Depression, and with his wife pregnant with the couple’s first child,
Mr. Vartan started Lake Shore Photo Engraving with a partner, his son
said.
Using a bench as bed, Mr. Vartan often slept in the building that
housed his company at 222 E. Superior St. after finishing shifts that
lasted as long as 16 hours, he said.
In 1948, the Vartans moved to Evanston, where the couple lived for 54
years and where Mr. Vartan was active in civic and community affairs.
Mr. Vartan was appointed by Daley to be chairman of the city’s first
Armed Forces Week in the 1970s.
Mr. Vartan retired in 1974 after selling his business to his sons
Gibby and Gentre.
Mr. Vartan also is survived by a daughter, Juraine Golin; a third
son, Gerron; 10 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. His wife
died in 2003.
Visitation will be from 3 to 9 p.m. Thursday at the Donnellan Family
Funeral Home, 10045 Skokie Blvd., Skokie. A funeral service will be
held at 10 a.m. Friday in St. Athanasius Church, 1615 Lincoln St.,
Evanston.