Memorial Service for the Benefactress of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), Mrs. Vartouhy Yesayan – In Memory

1979 Dec 02 Funeral Memorial Service for the Benefactress of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), Mrs. Vartouhy Yesayan – In Memory On December 2, 1979, at the Church of St. Kevork of Hadjen, following the Holy Badarak, by special directive of the AGBU Lebanon Regional Committee,------------- the 40-day memorial service for the passing of AGBU benefactress member Mrs. Vartouhi Yesayan was held, in the presence of mourning relatives and friends.-----------------The AGBU Lebanon Regional Committee, headed by its chairman at the time, Mr. Garbis Nazarian, hastened to pay its final tribute of respect to the memory of the deceased, as well as to express its condolences to the husband of the late benefactress, AGBU benefactor member Mr. Sdepan Yesayan.------------Benefactress Mrs. Vartouhy Yesayan, together with her husband Mr. Sdepan Yesayan, donated to the AGBU their two-storey building in Bhamdoun, surrounded by a plot of land measuring 181 square meters. In addition, she donated one quarter of a building inherited from her late brother, thus glorifying the names of both the Yesayan and the Pilavjian families.---------------- Among the active members of the AGBU Mersin branch was one of Mr. Stepan Yesayan’s paternal uncles, Neshan Yesayan, who was a benefactor, among others, to Vahan Malezian, Parsegh Balıkjian, and Archbishop Yeghishe Garoyan.------------------Who does not remember Mr. Stepan’s elder brother, Yenovk Yesayan, who was a well-known merchant in Beirut and possessed a heart of gold?-----------------Mr. Stepan Yesayan served in Adana as an official in the military supply office and the customs office, thanks to which numerous Armenian families found bread and security in Adana and Mersin. He was later transferred to Beirut, where until 1936 he taught French language and literature in Armenian and foreign schools, thereafter becoming a partner of his brother-in-law, the late Onnig Pilavjian, in his bakery, supplying bread—among others—to the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia (15