Monday, October 9, 2023
John Markarian changed my life.
It was in 1963-65, teaching history at Haigazian College under his leadership-- A young college with a faculty of various nationalities and viewpoints and a student body of the same. Markarian had an intelligence, confidence, and an outreach that attracted Lebanese leaders as well as the Armenian community. He was esteemed; he was popular, but, most important to me, he was deeply spiritual...in a way that did not separate him from others by virtue of a belief system. I will not forget the night at the AUB chapel, he gave the first of its kind: Genocide memorial. I look back now at how stunned I was as I walked out of the chapel that night. It was the marriage of the ideals of Christ's admonitions: forgiveness, sowing peace from discord, the lamb slaughtered, the awful sacrifice which God asks for no retribution... to the historical tragedy of the Genocide.
I had kept my faith separate from my intellectual growth until Markarian's talk that night. It was an "Eureka" moment of intertwining of mind and spirit.
Thank you, John.
