Our Story - Part 3
November 2010 – The ANA Seed Takes Root
On the evening of November 20, 2021, only a few hours after the Armenian symposium at USC had concluded, the small, young seed of the Armenian National Association— which had only been planted a month before - took root in a small Mediterranean restaurant located along Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, California.
Present for that dinner were two of the USC event organizers — Appo Jabarian and Dr. Z.S. Andrew Demirdjian. They were joined by Donald Wilson Bush (President of the Woodrow Wilson Legacy Foundation, a non-Armenian political consultant from Washington, D.C.), who had also attended the USC event, and Gary Bedian (a local businessman who was then serving as the Armenian Deputy Minister of Commerce).
While the waiter filled their table and plates with lula-kabob, skewered beef barbecue and a dozen other ethnic Armenian dishes, Bedian, who had missed the day’s big USC event, attempted to catch up on the news by fingering his way through the printed brochure to quickly scan the speakers’ biographies.
Then, suddenly, as if struck by a jolt of electricity, Bedian loudly remarked with a wild gesture of his left hand that was still holding the brochure, “Where are the Hayastanci Spyurk leaders? These speakers and panelists are all from the Old Spyurk!”
“The Armenian government will never be able to work with these Old Spyurk,” Bedian continued to rant. “They’re all LebanoHye, ParskaHye and Bolsa Hye! Instead of getting united with the new Hayastanci Spyurk to GIVE something to Armenia, this Old Spyurk is just trying to get united to TAKE something away from Armenia. This will never succeed! I predict a failure of this so called ‘unity’ project in two to three months.”
And he was right.
In less than ninety days, two years of preparation and hundreds of hours of planning were completely wasted simply because the leaders representing the different factions within the “Old Spyurk” (as Gary called them) could not agree on next steps.
“Just like that,” Donald Wilson Bush recalled, “the momentum stopped, the energy vanished and that particular unity project died.”
“For more than a year following that late night’s dinner at the Mediterranean restaurant in Studio City,” Bush said, “I continued to think about Gary Bedian’s dire assessment of the Spyurk and I asked him to teach me and to help me unpack all the pieces of the Armenian dilemma.”
“Over the next two years, we spent hundreds of hours together with our common friends Armen Janian and Roubina Der Sarkissian analyzing the complexities and particular nuances of the Armenian Diaspora,” Bush explained. “It was Gary Bedian and Armen Janian who challenged me to learn the Eastern Armenian dialect and to engage and to train the Hayastanci leaders of a ‘New Spyurk.’”
“It was Gary Bedian and Armen Janian who challenged me to learn the Eastern Armenian dialect and to engage and train the Hayastanci as leaders of a ‘New Spyurk.’”
“Having already experienced the dark side of Armenian community relations in such a profound way that day at USC,” Bush continued, “I decided to take a deep dive into the causes of Armenian vulnerability and her weak position vis-à-vis the Old Spyurk’s failure to leverage politicians in the international community to stop appeasing Erdogan and Turkey.”
“The most important aspect of the evolving Armenian reality that I received from Gary Bedian is the fact that the Armenian Diaspora in numerous U.S. Congressional districts had grown 15 to 17 times in just twenty years,” Bush recounted. “And the recent increase of Armenian immigrants in these districts, at least since the 2010 US Census, was almost entirely the Hayastanci.”
“Before he died in 2012, Gary really encouraged me to learn from the Hayastanci and to focus my efforts on mentoring and unifying a new generation of young Armenian leaders whose parents had emigrated to America from Hayastan,” Donald Wilson Bush said. “Gary had great hope that this New Spyurk could learn the same secrets of attaining political power and influence in Washington, DC that the Jews and Turks had obtained, and then use that influence to help Armenia and Artsakh. As Gary said to me on multiple occasions, ‘It’s about time we let the Hayastanci take a chance to lead the Spyurk!’”
“Gary had great hope that this New Spyurk could learn the same secrets of attaining political power and influence in Washington, DC that the Jews and Turks had obtained, and then use that influence to help Armenia and Artsakh.”
“When I learned that the LebanoHye, ParskaHye and BolsaHye had failed to empower the great number of incoming Haystansi,” Bush continued, “Gary made me to swear that I would educate, mentor and organize the leaders of this New Spyurk and to help them reach out in cooperation to the Old Spyurk who had already prepared the way for them.”
“I promised Gary that I would dedicate the future of my life, my time and my efforts to mentoring and unifying a new generation of Armenian leaders whose families came from Hayastan.” Bush said. “Then, just weeks before he died, Gary tried to convince me to marry a beautiful Hayastanci woman, and that’s what I did!”