BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – It was a 12-year labor of love for retired Illinois Wesleyan University Professor George A. Churukian to bring his father’s memoirs to the printed page.
“At times I thought it would never get done,” laughed Churukian, who self-published the book Never Settle for Second Best earlier this year, “but it was a journey I’m glad I undertook.”
Churukian’s father, Giragos Missak Churukian, died in 1994 at the age of 97. A physician who immigrated to America from the small Armenian village of Kessab in present-day Syria in 1931, the elder Churukian left behind a brief account of his life. “Parts of it were good, and parts were very sketchy,” said Churukian of the handwritten manuscript. “But my father left a lot of papers and a 1927 diary that helped put things into place. I was able to flesh out a lot of information.”
Shortly after his father’s death, Churukian and his family began to wade through the manuscript and a treasure trove of papers. “It was incredible how much we found. He had his passenger lists from the boat trips to America. He had an original contract when he worked as a doctor for the government of Sudan in the mid-1920s,” said Churukian, who also pulled from personal experiences when he and his brother Peter journeyed to his hometown in present-day Syria with his father on separate trips.