Dolores Amergian Drivas

Dolores’s family traces its Portland, Maine roots back to 1912 when her father came for the first time. The family opened grocery stores and other businesses throughout the area and helped to establish the long-standing Armenian community of Maine.

Question:

Dolores, tell me about your family, when they came here, to Portland?

Answer:

1912, my father came for the first time. He took his money back with him overseas, but he never got to see it after that because the war came on and his wife went off with a Turk, with their oldest daughter. And when he got home, the money was gone and everything, because he was up in the hills fighting off the Turks with (General) Antranig’s group.

Question:

Where did your father come from?

Answer:

From Kigi. Most of the Armenians in Portland came from Kigi.

Question:

The Tevanian family was also from there.

Answer:

Yes, they came over on the boat together. My mother ended up nursing her brother because my mother had my oldest brother and Caspar (Tevanian) was Patty's oldest brother, because Nuuvart, Patty’s mother, didn't, you know, have the lactose, have the child survive. So my mother was a rugged woman. So she did that all the way over here.

Question:Were your parents married in the old country?

Answer:

Yes, yes, they got married on the march. My mother (Natalie) came from Azrum. and her family came down they met up with my father's group going over. And he of course, this wife left him and everything. And my mother was only 19 years old. And she, her mother, someone came up to her and said that gentleman is quite interested in your daughter. So I guess her mother thought, well, what's gonna survive anything? Well, if he's going over to America, then I hope my daughter will go with them. And also, they got married. Oh, yes. My brother was born in Constantinople, in a barn, no less. I used to say, “My brother was a second Jesus. Ha!”

Question:

This is your brother, Ralph?

Answer:

Yes, Ralph.

(My mother was from) the northern part of Armenia. You know, closer to Russia because she understood Russian, besides Turkish and Armenian … But the poor dear. She wanted to get educated. Her father said, “no, a girl has to be a woman in everything.” And at that time when she wanted to have an education there was a tutor living in their house. But her father said no. And she was heartbroken … Yeah, well, he was her favorite. Well, she was the only daughter left because her mother wouldn't let him take the other two sisters to get inoculated from smallpox. And he said, Well, I'm taking (her) with the boys. And so that's what, she survived the smallpox, but the other two sisters died. So, yeah, so he bought her a horse. You know how over in this country, you'll get a car? He bought a horse for her. Yeah, he was a big farmer … she was engaged to, you know, way back to a childhood friend. And she really, really loved him and her own way, being a kid herself now because she knew she was gonna marry him. But he and his father and my grandfather were in town to take their wares, as you know, from the farms and everything. They never came back. They were killed off by the Turks … Between 1912 and 1915.

Question:

What year did your father return to the United States?

Answer:

They were coming over and they weren't allowed -- right on his passport --in any English court. They wouldn't allow them so they had to go back to France and then from France, I don't know how they got over. My (son) Ross got that from the archives there.

Question:

So your parents must have come over here around maybe 1920, early 1920s?

Answer:

Yes, I would say so. As I said, my mother had Ralph over there and he’s eight years older than I am. 

Question:

And where did they live when they got here?

Answer:

My family, because my sister was older sister, was born after Ralph. Ralph came over when he was nine months old. Because on the passport is my mother, my father and Ralph. You know when they came over. ..my father kept his Armenian spelling of the name Amergian to Amerikian . You know, when he handed out calendars to his customers it was Michael Amerikian because he was a grocer, see, after that, the first time over. When he came over, he worked in the stove foundry, like a lot of people did. And they all live down around Lancaster Street, like my father, I think stayed at his uncle's house, John Amergian, who was my grandfather. No, he was my father's uncle. I got that straight …

Question:

When he came here, he had relatives already in Portland?

Answer:

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he had his cousins … Larry, I don't know the ages of it to comparison to one or the other. Lizzie, which is Elizabeth, Lucy and George, all Amergians.

Question:

And, at first, your father worked for the stove manufacturer?

Answer:

When he came over the second time, he went into the grocery business … That’s another story. When he married my mother, my mother had her dowry with her and when they got over here at Ellis Island one of other people came over with them. And I don't know who they are. But they didn't have the money to get in, you know … And my father said to her, give her, give me your money. She says it's my dowry, that's what my mother gave me. And he says, no, they don't have any money and we've got to give him your money because he didn't have any at that point because, as I said, his wife went off with a Turk and took his money and everything that he had hidden away when he got back from the hills … so she was very upset. And he says, they'll pay us back, they promise. So, after a while when he wanted to get into business, he asked them, they said to him, they said, wow, right now, we don't have that much money to give you back in any way. We'll give you a nickel on every dollar ... To think that these people he came over with, who were Armenians, would do this. But I never found out who they were.

(My parents) ended up with a lot of property because of the help of my mother. His first grocery store was up on Congress Street, in Portland … my sister Virginia was born over there on Lancaster Street.  And then, when they moved up on Congress Street, they lived on the corner of Congress and India, which is right across from St. Paul's Episcopal Church. And then they also lived down off India Street someplace … there was six of us in our family. It was boy, girl, boy, girl, boy, girl, and I'm the youngest. I’m the last one left.

My father was known to own property where I was born on Oxford Street. And they listed them and they had their names there. Ralph was Veage, which is “revenge,” he was named, ha, ha. 

Yeah, and I'll tell you a lot, of my brothers, the three of them, he was the softest touch that you come across. He'd get all filled up with everything, like I do. But that was for a man. And then there was Vergine, which was Virginia. And then Vuskin, which was named after, which is William.

Some, they left their wives over there to come over here and make money and you know what, you know those stories, I'm sure. So that was Vuskin was named after that son that his aunt by marriage jumped into the river because she drowned herself with a child so the Turks wouldn't kill them, they would come in. And that was Vuskin and then there was Beverly … And then there was Nazareth for my father’s father and there was, of all people, my Armenian name was Arpine. At that time, the movie star was Dolores del Rio. They liked that name. So they went and signed me up city hall, my birth certificate and everything as Dolores.

My husband was Greek …  My wedding day. I was never so happy when I ended up with almost 300 people at my wedding, because his family would invite everybody. … At the Greek church in Portland because the Armenians didn't have a church. Most of them went to either St. Paul's … which is Episcopalian, or else, the Chestnut Street Methodist Church. … And I went to church over at Chestnut Street because my friends around me went there. And then I was a teacher for them one year when I was at Westbrook Junior College.

Question:

Now, tell me about your father's grocery store?

Answer:

He had a small one on Congress street across from the church, St. Paul's Church. And then he opened the one down on Oxford Street, where as I said, I was born there, over the store.

And that was the first, my father's Mikael Amirikian’s grocery store. And it was always  Michael Amergian, you now, the English part. And my brother Ralph took over when he got out of the service, grocery store. I think he got tired of being in a grocery store all his life. That's what we were always working in the store by now. And so he opened an appliance store. And then from the appliance store, across the street, he went up town in, you know, more central part of Congress Street and opened it down there. Amergian’s Appliance.

He was also a city councilor. And then the mayor of Portland. 

After that, he passed away. I'm trying to think of how old he was, in his late 60s. 

Diabetes, from the sweets and all but to be that group of those fellows that went into the service would drink a little too much, you know, the whole bunch of them. But when he came home from the service, he got all the fellows together that were in the service. That whole group was the Armenian boys. And he had them at my mother's house because he lived downstairs in our house on Mayo Street, right across from the store. And then he had to meet at my mother's house upstairs. He was living downstairs.

My brother Vuskin, but everyone knew him as Bill or William, when he got home. He went to Portland Junior College and got his, whatever degree it was in, he graduated from the two-year college. And he was a football coach for some of the football team that they started here in Portland. And then he was a football coach for Cheverus High School. And he was a referee in basketball and baseball. And when he retired, even before he retired, they gave him quite a few special banquets, surprise ones, you know, for that. He did very well in the sports world. And for 67 years he was in the American Legion and put the flags on the graves …

And  Nazareth worked at Nissan’s Company  and was really an electrical and mechanical wizard.

The boys all went into the service. Ralph was in the Air Force and Vuskin was in the Army and went on the campaign to Africa, right through to Italy, up to France. And when he was marching into Paris, because he was marching down. Some woman says, in Armenian, “Here comes another groups. What are they gonna do?” And he turns around and says, “Inchpes ek?”

And Ralph was in the Air Force. And when Ralph was stationed over there in Italy, the two of them met … So they got together and there was a picture in the Portland paper, and then Vuskin also met up with Andy Tevanian, who was from Portland … (brother) Nazzy went into the Korean service. He was younger. It was after high school, he went to Korea.

Question:

Tell me about your sisters.

Answer:

My sister Virginia married. Her husband’s name was Ray Miller. They were high school sweethearts. And he was the salt of the earth and my mother just lost him. My mother was quite disappointed because none of us married Armenians … of course they expected me to marry and Armenian. And I mean, like she expected me …  

When I was in the eighth grade, you had to say what course you were going to take in high school. And I said, Well, I told her I didn't know. I know that when I told her I want to be a teacher, she says you're crazy. She says they don't make enough money. And so, I, anyway, I tell her I wanted to be a teacher. And she said no. But I did become a teacher. (She has degrees from Westbrook Junior College and the University of Maine and taught science in schools in New York and in Maine, including Bar Harbor and, for 60 years, in Portland.) 

So Virginia just worked in the stores, both for my Uncle George in the 20th Century Market. And when she and Ray married, George and John Martin (Papazian) became partners. And John took the 20th century over here, and Uncle Leon took the Portsmouth store over, the Pic-and-Pay.

Question:

How many children do you have?

Answer:

I have three. A girl who I do not see at all, she just very rebellious. She was a real good kid ‘til she hit junior high school and I don't know what happened. And then I have my two boys, which my mother always used to say, I wish I only had, I wish I only had boys.  One day I turned around and said to her, ma, you keep saying that, I'm a girl. I'm not a boy. She said, yeah but I don’t mean you.

(Son) Ross, as I said, worked down to the ship yard. And Matthew works for the Sea Dogs. And he's in charge of the food.

Question:

How do you think the Genocide effected your life? When you think about growing up, did you have any problems being an Armenian in Portland?

Answer:

Oh, growing up. We’d have people come into the store and there was this one Irishman and he’d some in the store and he'd say, something, why don't you people go back to Ethiopia, where you came from? And some people would say, Oh, you were a little greaseball or something to me when I was real little, you know, and things like that. And I didn't know what a greaseball was.

And then I’d go some places, if I were among the Jewish people, then one lady came up and said, Oh, you're a pretty little Jewish girl. And then among the Irish, I was someone would say, Well, what part of Ireland did your people come from? … You know, I would get things like that. But I lived in a neighborhood where there were colored kids were the people living in our house, you know, that my mother had to rent … There was a fellow that lives next door to me and I go -- was a little kid -- and sing and dance for him. And he was black. And then there was another one … and he told me he was the first black that graduated from Portland High School.

Question:

When you hear that the Turks still deny the Genocide, what do you think?

Answer:

I get so, so angry with that. In fact, when my granddaughter was in France, in Paris, studying French, because that was one of her majors … she came out with some other friends and they say to her, You get back inside the dormitory, back to your room because the Turkish people are out … ‘til they had it all clear and they told her, You can come out now …

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