Lucille Lynch
Lucille Lynch 
| |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Lucille Boyajian |
| Birthplace | Selma |
| Birth date | 24 April 1930 |
| Lived in | Selma, Fresno |
| Resides in | Fresno |
| Languages | English |
| Ethnicities | Armenian |
By Carmen George April 22, 2020 11:14 AM, Updated April 22, 2020
Lucille Lynch of Fresno turns 90 years old on Friday, a milestone birthday her family was going to celebrate with a big party. The coronavirus pandemic canceled it.
In an effort to stay safe and maintain social distance, she no longer has plans for April 24. It’s a significant day for the Armenian American, whose maiden name is Boyajian, for more reasons than it being the day she was born in 1930. It’s also Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, which honors an estimated 1.5 million Armenians killed in the early 1900s by Ottomon Empire Turks. Members of Lynch’s family were among those killed.
“I feel really special that I was born on this day,” Lynch said of sharing her birthday with the genocide remembrance. “It helps me remember my parents and what they went through to get here and how they made a good life for my family.”
On her father’s side, her grandfather and several uncles were killed in the genocide. Lynch doesn’t know much about her mother’s side and is unsure how many of those ancestors may have been killed.
Two of her father’s half-sisters survived a death march by pretending they were dead in a pile of bodies. Turks previously branded them with tattoos to identify them as Armenian.
Those sisters later immigrated to America, as did Lynch’s father, Kerop Boyajian, and two of his brothers.
Kerop fled his Armenian village in Turkey in 1912, a few years before mass extermination began. He went to the East Coast and a couple years later sent for his Armenian wife, Azniv, and their 2-year-old daughter.
The couple had three more children. The youngest, Lynch, was born in Selma, where the family had moved so Kerop could work on a raisin farm owned by his sister’s husband, who invented a raisin-bleaching machine that earned him fame in the central San Joaquin Valley for making the “golden raisin.”
Lynch went on to have two daughters, Sandra and Susan, and one grandson, Cory.
Thinking of the atrocities her ancestors survived, Lynch quoted some famous lines from Armenian American writer William Saroyan, a native of Fresno: “I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered.
“Go ahead, destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.”
Lynch worked as a waitress at a number of area restaurants. Before that, she was as an usherette for the San Francisco Giants. She moved to Honolulu for a time, where she met her late husband, of Irish descent, after he whistled at her on a Waikiki beach.
She’s been living in Fresno since 1969 and still works selling Avon and Watkins products.
“I can’t believe I’m 90,” Lynch said. “I look back, I’ve had a good life. I’ve done a lot of fun things. I’ve done a lot of unusual things.”
Her daughter Sandra Lynch added, “She looks pretty hot for 90.”
Lynch misses going out to eat, what she used to do at least five days a week (including at her favorite spot, George’s on Blackstone Avenue, where she likes to visit with chef Simon) but she’s making do staying at home for now to stay safe as COVID-19 spreads.
Her birthday and Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day will pass more quietly this year, but with the same significance.
“This all really happened,” Lynch said of the Armenian Genocide, “and I don’t know what else to say about it. My family went through a lot of suffering, and we’re happy we made it to California.”
Source: https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article242172486.html
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