Barkev Hrayr Kaligian passed away Sunday, December 1, 2024, at UMass Memorial Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was 95 years old.
Barkev was born in 1929, the only child of Mesrob and Pavagan (Nenejanian) Kaligian, both the sole survivors of their families of the Armenian Genocide. Barkev was raised in Watertown and Newton, Massachusetts, and graduated from Newton High School in 1946. He joined the US Army and was posted across the country..
Upon completion of his military service in 1952, Barkev was admitted to the College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering in 1956 and spent most of his career working for the US National Park Service. He was very proud to have worked on projects at National Parks all over the USA, from Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, to Smoky Mountain National Park in Tennessee, to the Cape Cod National Seashore—as well as on projects at Ellis Island, Minuteman National Park in Concord, Mass, and Acadia National Park in Maine.
Barkev was a great lover of music and was well-known for his violin-playing. He started playing violin at a young age and was most grateful for his longtime teacher Mary Scipioni (who gave an French violin made in 1880, which he played throughout his life). It was his beloved fiddle playing at country music jams throughout Massachusetts, sometimes three or four times a week, that sustained him most in his later years, especially after his wife Seta passed away in 2018.
Barkev was raised an integral part of the Boston Armenian community, which grew out of being raised in an ARF family. His father Mesrob was a “gamavor” (volunteer) who returned from Boston to Armenia in 1915 to fight with General Antranig’s volunteer regiment of the Russian Army against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Barkev was a founding member of the ARF Boston Roupen gomideh and was a longtime member of the ARF Boston Sardarabad gomideh. He was also an active member of the St Stephen’s Armenian Apostolic Church in Watertown, Mass, where he sang in the choir almost every Sunday throughout his life. Barkev joined the AYF when young and was a member of its Central Executive in the late 1950s, and met many of his lifelong Armenian friends during those years. He was actively involved in the development of AYF Camp Haiastan, in Franklin, Mass., and served on its Board of Directors for three decades. Barkev was also an active member of the Armenian Cultural and Educational Center in Watertown Mass, and the Armenian Relief Society. In recognition of his many decades of service to the Greater Boston Armenian community, he was awarded the Armenian National Committee’s Vahan Cardashian Award in 2023.
In 1960 he met Seta Tamzarian, through mutual friends, and recruited her to be the staff nurse at Camp Haiastan during the summer of 1960, and they immediately hit it off. They were married in September in San Francisco where their oldest son Dikran was born the following year. They moved back to the East Coast in 1962, where their other three sons Zohrab, Aram, and Garin were born. They moved to Lexington, Massachusetts in December 1967 where they lived for the next fifty years.
Barkev’s wife Seta passed away in 2018. He leaves behind his four sons and their wives, and 11 grandchildren: Dikran and his wife Seda of Watertown Mass, and their children Keri, Rosdom, and Yeraz; Zohrab and his wife Holly of Kenosha, Wisc. and their children Areknaz, Arakel, Azniv, and Alidz; Aram and his wife Lenna of Belmont, Mass and their daughters Gayane and Arev; and Garin and his wife Hooshere of Manhasset, NY, and their children Araxi and Masis. He also leaves behind many beloved cousins, nephews, and nieces.
Funeral services will be held on Saturday, December 7, 2024 at 11 am at St. Stephen’s Armenian Apostolic Church, One Artsakh Street, Watertown, Massachusetts. Graveside services will follow at Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA.
In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Armenian Relief Society of Eastern USA, 80 Bigelow Avenue, Watertown MA 02472, or to Camp Haiastan Inc, PO Box C, Franklin MA 02038, or to St. Stephen’s Armenian Apostolic Church.