NEW YORK — (This article is part two of an interview Florence Avakian conducted with Vartan Gregorian in New York. Part one of the interview appeared in last week’s edition of the Mirror-Spectator.)
By Florence Avakian
Florence Avakian: Dr. Gregorian, growing up in Tabriz, Iran, and Beirut, Lebanon must have been very significant. What influenced you to pursue higher education during you childhood?
Vartan Gregorian: Nobody encouraged me. There was no talk of higher education. I went to an Armenian-Russian elementary school in Tabriz. In 1946, Iranian armed forces came and asserted the authority of the central government and we had to then learn Persian. My grandmother was illiterate, my mother had died and my father had a high school education — then considered the ultimate degree. There was no one in my family who went on to higher education.
FA: Then who or what inspired you to continue your education?
VG: Somehow, the course of my life has been influenced by the “kindness of strangers.” So I was encouraged to go to Beirut by the French vice consul. I had no money and only three letters of recommendation. But that’s natural because when you’re weak, you trust strong people’s words. In my book, The Road to Home, I describe my trials and tribulations in Beirut. Another strength was exposure to the French language and literature. It opened a whole world for me in Lebanon. Even then, the school I attended, the College Armenien, was the ultimate education I could hope for. I had no idea even then that I would enter an institution of higher education. After all, I was studying Portuguese in order to become the principal of the Armenian high school in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Then, two or three students from the College Armenien received fellowships to go abroad and I went to the US to attend Stanford University. I had no idea then about public or private education, of which I have spoken today. Remember, as I noted earlier, tuition at Stanford was $750 a year.