The Sweetness of Freedom: Stories of Immigrants

America Was the Best Country to Live In

Haratoune Adrounie, an Armenian from Turkey America Was the Best Country to Live In B etween 1894 and 1922, both the Ottoman Empire and its successor governments in Turkey attempted to eliminate the Armenian minority living in what is now central and western Turkey. Systematic campaigns of extermination, as well as mob violence, starvation, and disease resulted in the deaths of some 1.5 million Armenians. Survivors who were unable to escape the region by emigrating to the United States or Europe fled east into Russian Armenia, which is today an independent republic. HaratouneAsadoreAdrouniewasbornin1882inthemountain village of Zetoune, in the Ottoman Empire, which eventually became part of Turkey. When Haratoune was sixteen years old, he left home and went to St. Paul’s Institute, an American school in Tarsus. In 1909, just before he was to graduate, Muslim Turks rioted across the country. Many of them attacked Christian Armenians— targets of economic jealousy and religious prejudice. Thousands werekilledasviolencespread.WhentheTurksthreatenedtoattack theAmericanschoolinTarsus,AdrouniedressedinTurkishclothes and rode seventeen miles on horseback to Mersina to request help from British troops. Successful in his mission, Adrounie faced certain death if he 66 | HARATOUNE ADROUNIE returned to Tarsus. He fled to America. Once in the United States, Adrounie pursued his childhood dream of becoming a doctor. He wrote Dr. John H. Kellogg of the cereal company, who encouraged him to continue his education. Adrounie lived with the Kellogg family while studying at Battle Creek Medical College. In 1912 Adrounie graduated from the University of Illinois School of Medicine. Haratoune Adrounie married Dirouhie (Dorothy) Kalaidian, the sister of a good friend from Turkey, in 1912. He received his medical license and set up his practice as a doctor in 1915 in Lacey, Michigan. In 1922 he became a United States citizen. In 1924, he moved to Hastings, Michigan. He and his wife had two children. He died in Ann Arbor in March 1936. Martha Aladjem (Climo) Bloomfield interviewed his son, Dr. V. Harry Adrounie, on November 18, 1999. Dr. V. Harry Adrounie died on February 9, 2010, and was buried in Arlington Cemetery with a full military service. Armenian Roots My father, Harry Adrounie, was born in Zetoune, Turkey, which used to be Armenia at one time. Zetoune was way up in the mountains . To the Armenians, anybody from Zetoune was a warrior. When some of the missionaries came through, they’d stop in the village. There were some physicians. So all of a sudden my father decided he wanted to become a physician. This was still when he was in his young teens, I guess. So one day, he just up and left the mountains. He’d heard of this school in Tarsus called St. Paul’s College, run by Americans. Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Christie were in charge of the school. So my father went down there. He was sixteen years old and big for his age. He said he wanted to start school there. They said, “Well, you can’t just up and start school. You’ve got to know the language and a few other things.” They turned him away two or three times. One night, he climbed up the wall and went in a window under Dr. Christie’s room and said, “I want to go to school.” And AN ARMENIAN FROM TURKEY | 67 Dr. Christie said, “Well, I guess you do.” So he gave him a job with the horses and started him in the first grade. He said he felt kind of funny—a big kid with all these little kids. Sometimes German and English people came around and wanted a guide or something. He took them where they wanted to go and translated for them, because he had learned German. He ended up knowing Turkish, Greek, German, French, Armenian, and English. Then came the massacres in 1909. All the Armenians who were Christians were crammed into this college—it was like a compound. They had a wall around it. I drove up to Tarsus and visited it when I was teaching in Beirut. It’s now a high school. But COURTESY OF THE ADROUNIE FAMILY Haratoune married Dirouhie (Dorothy) Kalaidian in 1912. They are pictured here with their children, V. Harry and Zabelle. 68 | HARATOUNE ADROUNIE atthattime,therewereeighttotenthousandpeoplecrammedinto this place so the Turks wouldn’t get them. These were the young Turks doing this massacre. They sent word into this school to the officials that if they didn’t turn out these people, regardless that it was an American...