A Civic Thank-You Note, Written in Festival Form

More than a century after Armenians fleeing genocide found refuge in Pasadena, their descendants are returning the favor with what organizers call ‘a civic thank-you note’—staged at the city’s front door.

The Pasadena Armenian Festival will relocate to City Hall’s Centennial Square on Saturday with 70 vendors, nearly double the 40 vendors at last year’s inaugural event at Victory Park. But the growth in scale reflects something more fundamental: a coalition of approximately 30 Armenian organizations spent eight to nine months coordinating what they describe as a gesture of gratitude to a city that welcomed their community beginning in the 1890s.

“This is our way of saying thank you, Pasadena, and thank you, San Gabriel Valley” for providing a welcoming haven to Armenians for decades, according to festival spokesperson Mihran Toumajan, Western Region Director of the Armenian Assembly of America. The coalition, he noted, “came together and said, ‘Let’s do something for the benefit of the greater community, not just the Armenian community.'”

The organizational feat was not simple.

“There’s nothing easy about it,” acknowledged Raffi Koroghlian, who serves on the festival’s organizing committee and marketing committee, referring to bringing together 30 organizations. The coalition coordinates what he described as “a hundred to 200 different tasks.”

Angie Mitilian, who serves on the organizing committee and marketing committee, added: “Obviously we all come from different backgrounds, different views, but it’s really interesting that all of us do have one common goal of wanting to bring the Pasadena community together.”

Pasadena’s Armenian community dates to the 1890s and grew substantially following the Armenian Genocide over 100 years ago.

“The genocide was committed by the Ottoman Empire,” Koroghlian said. “When that happened, Armenians were displaced all over Europe, all around countries like neighboring countries of Armenia and countries like Iran, Lebanon, Beirut, Syria, Germany, everywhere.”

Including Pasadena.

The Festival’s coalition represents “multiple generations of Armenians who’ve settled in San Gabriel Valley,” Toumajan stated.

This year’s expansion includes five to six new member organizations.

“Some of them are school programs in Pasadena, and then some are actual cultural groups in Pasadena,” Koroghlian said.

The festival runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. with programming throughout the day.

“The first half of the day, as far as the programming goes, will be similar to last year,” Koroghlian said. “The first entire half of the day will be all of the schools.”

Local students will perform traditional Armenian songs, music, poems, and dance throughout the morning. The afternoon features bands playing traditional Armenian instruments.

The festival benefits three Armenian schools in Pasadena, which will receive proceeds distributed equally, according to festival documentation. The beneficiary schools are Sahag-Mesrob Armenian Christian School, St. Gregory Alfred and Marguerite Hovsepian School, and L&H Tavlian Armenian Preschool and Kindergarten.

Sahag-Mesrob Armenian Christian School’s Altadena campus was destroyed by the Eaton Fire on January 7. Its students relocated to the AGBU Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Cultural Center in Pasadena, according to festival records.

The festival’s outreach deliberately extends beyond Armenian audiences.

“We want all different types of ethnicities to come and enjoy the festival,” Koroghlian said. Organizers reached out to non-Armenian social media influencers to spread awareness. “We learned a lot of ways to engage more of a broader audience and not just Armenian audience,” he said.

“What we found that we noticed is that a lot of non Armenians in part of the community, the greater Pasadena San Gabriel Valley community, [were] very interested in why are we doing this festival? What’s the history behind it?” Mitilian said.

For Koroghlian, a lifelong Pasadena resident, the festival revealed unexpected depth in his own community.

“I discovered organizations and groups in Pasadena of Armenians that I didn’t know existed, which is crazy if you think about it. I was born and raised in Pasadena. I was born in Huntington Hospital in Pasadena,” he reflected.