Viken Yepremian Is Still Answering His Father
Обновлено: 16 часов назад
SEPTEMBER 14, 2026, ASHOT POGHOSYAN, FRESNO, CALIFORNIA, U.S. CORRESPONDENT, YEREVAN ONLINE Mag.
The interview was over when Viken Yepremian sent a few more lines.
“I think I forgot to mention that from third grade until I immigrated to America, I served in the Armenian Apostolic Church, first as an acolyte, then as a stole-bearing deacon, at St. Thaddeus Church in Amman. I was ordained by Archbishop Shahe Ajemian.”
He had forgotten to mention it. From third grade until he emigrated in 1983, he had served in the same church. First as an acolyte, then as a stole-bearing deacon. To him, those years had simply been work. Only at the end did he think to include them in the story of his life.
In his Fresno office, numbers are everywhere: taxes, payroll, loans, interest, home values, insurance. Viken does not shy away from numbers. He pauses over the death toll from 2020.
“Was it four thousand? Three? Five? Who said so? Where did they get that number?”
The question is always the same. If they knew they would lose, why did they send those people to war?
Viken Yepremian was born in Amman in 1962. His parents, Levon and Yeghsabet, had come from Aleppo.
“Out in the desert,” he says. “No Armenian community. Nothing.”
Viken with his parents, Levon and Yegisapet Yepremian, and his siblings, Mardig and Houri.
Then the Armenians came together. About two thousand, as he remembers it. They had two clubs, an Armenian Apostolic church, an Armenian Catholic church, and an Armenian school. St. Thaddeus Church was affiliated with the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. The school was called Yuzbashian-Gulbenkian.
Viken finished sixth grade there. That was all the schooling he ever had in Armenian.
After the war in 1970, the community grew smaller. Many Armenian Catholics left for Lebanon and never returned, and the Armenian Catholic church closed. The school lasted longer, but it too grew smaller. Just before it closed, it had 64 students, 30 of them Armenian. Only 17 Armenian students were expected the following year. Then the school closed.
Viken kept his Armenian. Amman is still there in his speech. So are Aleppo and Fresno. He says “so,” “insurance,” “afford.” A sentence can begin in Western Armenian and end with an American word. It is the family’s language. At home, they spoke it, argued in it, sang in it, held meetings in it.
In Aleppo, Levon Yepremian had been a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. In 1958, Syria and Egypt united. Political parties were banned or went underground. According to the family, Levon was forced to leave Aleppo.
In Amman, he became a mechanic working on heavy diesel vehicles. He repaired big trucks. People in the city knew him.
In the evenings, their small house filled with people. One day, club board members. The next, party officials. Sometimes the Armenian Catholic priest came and said that no one was coming to church. The talk always circled the same things: the school, the church, young people, the community.
They did not call him Levon. They called him Uncle Levon.
They came for advice. He listened. Then he spoke.
Levon also served on the Homenetmen board. He attended the organization’s delegate assemblies in Lebanon in 1974 and Cyprus in 1978. They talked about those at home too. Viken sat beside him, listened, then began to argue.
Yeghsabet did not work outside the home. She ran the household. She was strict. The children grew up, married, had children of their own, but stayed close. Viken credits his mother with keeping them together. Yeghsabet died just before the pandemic. The family remained close.
In September 1970, the Jordanian army and Palestinian armed groups began fighting. The fighting reached Amman. Viken was eight. After the war, activity at the Armenian clubs dwindled. Homenetmen’s scouting movement had almost come to a halt.
In 1977, Viken was fifteen. He gathered the children from the club and re-formed the scout troop. Representatives of the regional board in Lebanon came to Amman for the opening. The children were together again.
Viken with his uncle, Der Adom Kehyayan; with Seta Kabranian during his student years in 1981; with Hovakim Hovakimyan; and with Garo Kahkejian
Parents sometimes came to the Yepremians’ house.
“My son isn’t studying. He spends all day at the club. He listens to Viken.”
Viken says now:
“I can say I didn’t have much of a childhood.”
By then, he was already running meetings, taking responsibility for children, arguing with adults. Once, he attended a Homenetmen general assembly as a scout leader. He was not a full member. He was fifteen. A close friend of his father’s chaired the meeting. Viken spoke at length, and bluntly.
When they got home, his father asked:
“Who are you to talk like that?”
Viken answered:
“I’m one person. But I can convince the general assembly that I’m right and you’re wrong.”
His father often had to rein him in. Viken was quick to flare up. When it came to Armenian issues, he showed no restraint. He knows it. He says he is still the same.
It was 1979. One of the last days of a Homenetmen camp. They had an event to mark May 28. One of Viken’s friends was a photographer. He had brought his photographs to show them.
Levon Yepremian looked at the work.
“Bravo, young man. You’re going to be a very good photographer.”
It was Thursday.
Later, Levon went to the hospital. He had a heart attack and died there. Viken was seventeen.
His father had made it to America once. He had visited his daughter, Viken’s sister, in Fresno, then returned to Amman. He wanted all his children together in one country. He never saw that day.
After his father’s death, Viken worked for a photographer. What he learned came in handy years later, when he and that same friend opened a photo lab in Fresno. Before that, he had tried to study in Armenia. It did not work out. He was in Armenia. His mother and younger brother were in Amman, his older brother in France, his sister in Fresno.
The family was scattered across several countries. They decided to come together. They did not want to stay in Jordan. They could not settle in Armenia. They could not afford Paris.
They came to America in 1983. Viken was twenty-one.
In the early years, he had no permanent residency papers. He and his brother worked on a lunch truck for five years, until their papers were in order.
Then Viken began buying small businesses. He got them into shape and sold them. By his count, nine different businesses passed through his hands in a single year.
He liked arithmetic. He had no degree. People brought him their paperwork. One was buying a car, another was selling one. Someone had been in an accident and could not make sense of the insurance company’s response. Viken went with them, spoke to the agent, explained the contract.
One day, he decided to stop doing other agents’ work. He became an insurance agent himself. He stayed in the business for twenty-five years. Then he got a real estate license and moved into accounting and financing.
When someone wanted a house, Viken found one. When someone needed a loan, he arranged it. He insured the property and kept the books. When California’s insurance market grew complicated, he sold the agency.
Today, Yepremian provides accounting services, property management, and private financing. On his public professional profile, Viken says he manages more than 47 properties in the Fresno and Clovis area.
He says he never got an education. Then he tells you everything he learned by sorting out other people’s affairs.
After arriving in America, Viken returned to the same work he had begun in Amman. First, he became a local Homenetmen scout leader. Then he joined the Armenian Youth Federation, led the local chapter, and served on regional and central committees. He was elected twice to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation’s Western U.S. Central Committee. He oversaw its work in Fresno and Phoenix. He chaired two regional conventions.
That last distinction matters to him.
“For me, it was the greatest honor.”
Those were active years for the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in Fresno. People came from Armenia, Artsakh, and Armenian communities across the Diaspora—officials, party figures, public figures. Artsakh President Arkady Ghukasyan came to Fresno as well. Meetings often drew 500 or 600 people, a large turnout for Fresno’s Armenian community. The halls filled. People came to listen, ask questions, argue, and see one another. Armenian life in Fresno was not quiet then. It moved, and the ARF chapter Viken helped lead stood near the center of it.
There was daily work alongside the meetings. In Fresno, they ran two bingo operations. The proceeds kept the chapter going. Sometimes the committees in Los Angeles asked for help too. Fresno sent money.
In 2005, Viken welcomed the participants in the March for Humanity to Fresno as they called for recognition of the Armenian Genocide. In 2007, when the Armenian school bought a new property, he donated his entire real estate commission to the school.
He does not dwell on those episodes. What he remembers most are the roads, the meetings, the hours on duty. By his count, he spent thirty-five years in Armenian community work without a break.
In 1993, Viken and a friend decided to take money to Artsakh. They did not want to send it through an organization. They took it themselves. They handed it over there and went as far as Aghdam.
Viken with Commander Bedo Gevondyan in Shushi, September 1993; with Hampig Sasounian; with Catholicos Karekin II; and with Andranik Boghosian in Yerevan
On November 9, 2020, Aghdam’s name entered Viken’s life again. This time in the text of a statement. The second clause of the trilateral document said that the district was to pass under Azerbaijani control by November 20.
Three years later, in September 2023, more than a hundred thousand Armenians from Artsakh arrived in Armenia in a single week.
Viken pauses for a long time when he talks about it. He says he felt like a man who had been hit by Mike Tyson. He took the blow and still has not recovered.
He does not pretend to be a political scientist. He says everyone had known for years that Azerbaijan was arming itself.
“Why didn’t we prepare?”
He does not soften his words when he talks about Armenia’s government, especially Nikol Pashinyan. Viken is convinced that those in power knew defeat was coming and failed to act in time. He rejects the explanation that the public would not have accepted territorial concessions without a war and deaths.
“If you knew you were going to lose, why did you go? Why did you give up four thousand lives? Four thousand, three thousand, two thousand, one person—what difference does it make?”
He sees Pashinyan as a political experiment.
After Artsakh, he began reading less news from Armenia. He has blocked several news pages on his phone.
“I don’t want to. I can’t bear it.”
When Viken goes to Armenia, he usually stays no more than two weeks. Work will not let him stay longer. He spends one day in Yerevan, then tries to get out to the villages.
In the city, the way people talk bothers him. The “swagger,” as he calls it. Their indifference bothers him more.
Someone in Yerevan said to him:
“Man, how much time do you have on your hands, watching the news like that?”
He still remembers those words. In Fresno, he can spend two hours following news from Armenia’s border. In Yerevan, someone laughs at him for worrying so much. Viken does not understand it.
He keeps repeating one sentence about the villages.
“You go through the villages and you don’t see a villager. You don’t see a dog.”
His work brings him many clients from Armenia. He says they include young families from Spitak, Gyumri, and various villages. They won the immigration lottery and came to America. Viken suspects that the departure of young people from the villages is no accident.
That is where the facts end. What follows is his suspicion. He offers no evidence. He compares the clients he has seen and asks: Why are they from the villages in particular? Why are they coming with children?
Here too, he counts. Ten or fifteen young families leave a village. Who will be left in twenty years?
Years ago, he bought land in Armenia. He planned to build houses for his children. He thought that one day he would spend six months in Armenia and six months in Fresno. Everyone around him knew the plan.
“Today I’m here. Tomorrow I won’t be.”
After Artsakh, he sold the land. He dropped the plans for the houses. He still goes to Armenia. His voice is no longer the same when he talks about returning.
Viken Yepremian has no hobbies. He does not play golf. He does not fish. He says there is work, family, and a few friends.
The Armenian school’s fundraising committee often meets in Viken’s office. The school’s bookkeeping, payroll, and financial reports are handled here too.
In the small house in Amman, people came to Uncle Levon. In Fresno, some of the meetings now take place in Viken’s office.
On the wall to the right is a photograph of his mother. Viken points to it.
“That’s my mom.”
His big dreams have grown smaller. He says it to himself. He wants to help as much as he can. He wants his children and grandchildren to stay Armenian.
The Yepremian family with their in-laws; Viken with Sonia Yepremian, his wife of 38 years; and Viken with his grandson, George Viken
His son is a lawyer. He sings Armenian songs: traditional ashugh songs, patriotic songs, revolutionary songs. He speaks Armenian at home. His daughter has ties to Armenian life too. His brother’s children speak proper Armenian.
When Viken sings with his son, he sometimes gets a word wrong. His son stops him.
He corrects the Armenian word. Then they continue singing.
The biographical details and quotations in this article are based on an interview with Viken Yepremian.
