Sarah Anderson
As a fourth-generation American, Sarah Anderson grew up in a family that had already set its roots firmly in the Armenian-American community. Her great-grandparents married young and opened the Orchard Hill Dairy, a restaurant and dairy shop where they served Armenian food alongside the ice cream and milkshakes. “They’d make Armenian burgers—so, lamb, lamb, lamb, lamb…and big barrels of Armenian cracker bread.They fed and cared for their community, and they worked with other Armenians, and they made excellent ice cream.”
Food was always an important part of Sarah’s cultural identity; the love of cooking was passed down from her great-grandmother, who taught the children of the family to cook Armenian dishes; to this day, the relatives compete over who can best recreate her rice pilaf recipe. “To stand at the stove with them and pass the recipes on, was to be family together.”
For Natalie Israelian, “being part of the diaspora meant...that she was never going home, but home was always Armenia. The homeland was Armenia. When we had funerals, we always had Armenian dirt that was scattered as they were buried, so they would always have home with them."
Another important part of the Israelian family’s history is Barmakian’s Jewelers, an Armenian-owned business in Massachusetts. Since Sarah’s great-grandparents were married, every couple in the family has been engaged with a Barmakian’s ring; when Beatrice was alive, it was her self-appointed duty to scout whichever men seemed ready to propose and to take them up to Barmakian’s to choose a ring. “For my great grandma, it wasn’t so much jewelry as it was a way of supporting Armenians, caring for them, being part of the Armenian community, and continuing traditions, passing them on and keeping that alive.”