WATERTOWN – The estate of the late Dr. Nubar Berberian has bequeathed a sum of $340,000 to the Tekeyan Cultural Association, Inc. (TCA). The Central Board of Directors of the TCA decided to establish the irrevocable Dr. Nubar Berberian Trust Fund and carry out his wishes as expressed in his will by publishing a volume of Dr. Berberian’s Armenian-language articles and editorials. It will also use the interest annually from the bequest to provide awards to college students of Armenian descent who major in either International Law or Political science and who are born or live in the United States, France, Egypt or Armenia.
Noted journalist and Armenian activist Dr. Nubar Berberian passed away on November 23, 2016, after a brief illness. He was 94 years old.
He was born in Cairo, Egypt on September 25, 1922 to Kevork and Areknaz Berberian. After receiving an Armenian education in the Nubarian School of Heliopolis, he studied in a French lyceum for the French baccalaureate. He received his law degree in 1944, and registered at the Egyptian Mixed Tribunal.
Driven by an unquenchable thirst for education, he left for France, where he received a doctoral degree in jurisprudence in 1947 from the University of Paris School of Law. Full of Armenian patriotic fervor, he entered Armenian public life, putting aside other career possibilities.
Most probably he was unable to form a family due to his nomadic existence. Instead, the Armenian nation and homeland constituted his family. He also dedicated himself to the care of his elderly mother, until her final advanced years.
His life consisted wholly of labor in the service of the Armenian nation, working as a talented journalist, an articulate and compassionate orator and a principled leader. He played a role in nearly all of the main contemporary organs of the Armenian Democratic Liberal Party (ADL). Thus, in 1947 he accepted the editorship of the newspaper Abaka in Paris, after which he edited the following organs: the daily Arev in Cairo (1948-1958), the thrice-weekly Nor Or of Fresno (1958-1960) and Boston’s Baikar daily (1961-82). During the same period, he published short stories and poetry in the Baikar yearbook under the penname Piuragn.
