Propelled by Expectations
Shirley Melikian
Armbruster
Director of News Services - University Communications
People always laugh when I tell them the first vehicle I ever drove was a tractor. It’s true. I probably was 9 or 10 years old when I starting driving a tractor—very slowly—in the rows of grapevines as my father walked behind and tossed pruned stumps into the trailer I was pulling.
“Tsahkuhs,” said grandmother Virginia, using an Armenian term of endearment, “when you go to college (not “if”) we’ll be so proud of you.”
That wasn’t my only chore on our 40-acre family farm in Fowler, but it was my favorite, mostly because driving was fun for a kid and because I had learned multi-tasking at an early age – I could put a book on the steering wheel and lose myself in the story while the tractor crept along.
If I had been born a generation earlier, I would have spent my life on that farm. And I wouldn’t have just lazily piloted a tractor through the rows. I would have had more chores and heavier workload, even if I was a girl.
My parents and their siblings and cousins were the first generation born in this country to Armenian parents. As they grew up they faced significant barriers and outright prejudice – including in education – because of their ancestry. “Remember Cousin George,” was their oft-repeated reminder of that prejudice. George, my mother's very bright, ambitious first cousin, had high grades and test scores but was denied admission to medical school because he was Armenian. (Years later, in the 1980s when my husband and I were buying property in Fresno, we saw confirmation of that prejudice on an old title document that included prohibition on selling the parcel to “Negroes,” “Jews” or “Armenians.”)
But I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s and it was the beginning of a new era. College was an obtainable goal for many young people – even farm kids and Armenians. My parents and grandparents sensed this new opportunity and instilled in us from a very young age that opportunities were waiting for us. We were expected to seize them.
“Tsahkuhs,” said grandmother Virginia, using an Armenian term of endearment, “when you go to college (not “if”) we’ll be so proud of you.”
I didn’t have a mentor, per se. Just encouraging high school teachers and parents with high expectations. My parents, who didn’t know what was needed for college admission, sat at the kitchen table with us as we sorted through catalogues, brochures and forms. They said little, but made it clear that we were responsible to get the job done.
And we did. My sister graduated from Fresno State – the first on my mother’s side of the family to earn a college diploma. I was the second, two years later. All six of our younger cousins followed. The entire second-generation of a Fowler Armenian-American clan became first-generation college graduates.
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