Date CommentSource VariousMy grandfather died when I was 14 months old, so all of my memories of him are from things he left behind and from stories my mother told me as a child. I was always fascinated by my grandmother's house, particularly the basement. The stairs which descended into it were planks and the incline was particularly steep so just walking down them was a kind of frightening yet thrilling rite of passage. I remember the unusual musty smell, the tool bench, the old tub washing machine, the table saw which I was NOT TO TOUCH, and the fruit cellar, empty but for a few mason jars on the shelves, with a little bit of light gleaming in from a small window like a reminder that Jesus would save me from whatever scary things that crept about down there. My mother told me that my grandfather was a great cabinet maker, proof of which was provided by a few articles of furniture in our house. I began to think any nice peice of furniture was something my grandfather had made. When I was older she told me that he loved to fish, and that as a young man he had worked on a fishing boat in Georgia, during the years of the genocide. He had a lifelong love of fishing and later on during his adult life, when he occasionally had an out of town job, he would always find a lake to swim and to fish in. I still have a hook, line and sinker display he made as a kind of joke, as well as an old reel. I also have the book from which he learned English (Harrington and Cunningham, "First Book of English for Nonn English Speaking People", D.C. Heath & Co, Boston Mass.). In addition to occasional small scribbly notes in Armenian, you can see "MARION MARION MARION MARION" in child's handwriting, written across one of the pages. I also have an empty bottle of 1886 whiskey to which he had added bing cherries. gi 2010-05-16 1906-10-14 Immigrated to St. Louis, Missouri. Link to Ship Recordsgi 2018-08-17 c.f. 1918-1920? Jane (Erganian Kandoian)tells another story about how destinary spared our grandfather from doom. While he was at a beach while on leave from the fishing vessel in Georgia, he was wading in the tide by the sea. Nearby where he was wading was a small sailboat. A dog, somewhere in the brush behind him, started wildly barking so he went to see what the dog was barking about. Just as he left the beach, an enormous wave crashed onto the shore, destroying the small sailboat in its wake. jek 2010-05-16 c.f. 1960 Jane (Izmirlian Baker) tells a story about how when she was a small child our Grandfather thought that the small mole on her upper lip was a piece of dirt, so he used to scratch and scratch at it, trying to remove it. jib 2010-05-16 Back to Mgrdich Yeprim Erganian