By Kevork Keushkerian
ALTADENA, Calif. — The Tekeyan Cultural Association Metro Los Angeles Chapter on May 1 hosted a very informative lecture titled “Arms for Armenia: The Matter of Airplanes – The Attempted Purchase of Surplus British Royal Air Force Fighter Planes for the First Republic of Armenia by the Constitutional Ramgavar Party of Egypt,” at the Tekeyan Center’s Beshgeturian Hall. The keynote speaker was Dr. Richard G. Hovannisian, past holder of the Armenian Educational Foundation Chair in Modern Armenian History at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Presidential Fellow at Chapman University.
Mistress of Ceremonies Sevan Der Bedrossian welcomed the guests on behalf of the chapter and invited Dr. Raffi Balian and Mayor Ardashes “Ardy” Kassakhian to address the audience.
Balian, chairman of the Armenian Democratic Liberal Party’s Western Regional Committee, congratulated the Tekeyan Cultural Association (TCA) on its 75th anniversary and noted that the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Armenian Democratic Liberal Party (ADL or “Ramgavar”) will be celebrated this June in Yerevan.
Kassakhian, the newly elected mayor of Glendale, mentioned that Hovannisian was his teacher at UCLA. He then praised Hovannisian for writing books on the Armenian Genocide. He further noted that during the years of the first Republic of Armenia, there was a pandemic in Armenia similar to the one now.
Der Bedrossian then took to the podium and gave a brief introduction about Hovannisian, who graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees, before receiving his doctorate from UCLA.
