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Remembering Lillian Cole Sewny on National Nurses Day May 6, 2018 at 9:00 am Wendy Elliott Lillian Cole Sewny’s personnel records (Document: Amerikan Bord Heyeti (American Board), Istanbul, “Personnel records for Lillian Cole Sewny,” American Research Institute in Turkey, Istanbul Center Library, online in Digital Library for International Research Archive, Item #15568, http://www.dlir.org/archive/items/show/15568 (accessed May 4, 2018).) Special to the Armenian Weekly Lillian Cole, born in Tenafly, New Jersey in 1870, graduated from Mountainside Hospital Training School for Nurses in nearby Montclair in 1892. She nursed in the area for several years, but around her 30th birthday, she began to feel restless. At her “advanced age,” statistics predicted she would never marry. Surely, there was something more she could do to feel fulfilled. When she heard that the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was recruiting single women for mission work in the Ottoman Empire, she found her calling. In 1901, Lillian was assigned to the small hospital in Talas in the middle of the Ottoman Empire. Given the limited facilities and her struggles to learn Turkish, she found the work challenging but very rewarding. Her patients were the Armenian, Greek, and Turkish residents of Talas and area. There, she formed close friendships with the American and Canadian teachers of the mission’s boys’ and girls’ schools. She liked her work there so much that in 1904, she applied for and was granted missionary status. This entitled her to do evangelical work with her patients. It should have been a good time for Lillian, but her missionary appointment brought to a head a simmering conflict within the station between the medical staff and the teaching staff. Though William Dodd, the doctor in charge, praised her nursing skills, he found Lillian’s religious views (and those of the teachers) lacking—which really meant they differed from his. The conflict grew, ultimately tainting the mission’s environment so badly that by 1906, Lillian resigned. “I am unwilling to be under the sole control of Dr. Dodd acting independently of the Station,” she said. While the trustees and the teachers accepted her resignation with sadness, the medical missionaries were relieved to see her go. Her departure, however, did nothing to resolve the conflict. A few years later the medical staff left, too, and the hospital temporarily close d. As Christians are fond of saying, when the Lord closes a door, He opens a window. After spending a year at home, Lillian accepted a new assignment in Sivas, 100 miles northeast of Talas. She quickly became one of its most valued workers. Within five years, she had helped build a hospital and medical clinic, and established a program to train local girls as nurses. She also defied the statistics by falling in love with the young, British-trained Armenian physician who was director of the Sivas hospital while the American doctor was on furlough. In 1912, Lillian Cole and Levon Sewny married in a grand ceremony in the mission’s compound, much to the delight of their colleagues. They spent two happy years together before the start of the Great War. In 1914 Dr. Sewny was conscripted into the Ottoman army, and was sent to the Russian front to care for wounded and sick soldiers. That winter a typhus epidemic swept through the region between Sivas and the front. The doctor at the Red Cross hospital in Erzurum asked the medical staff in Sivas for emergency aid. Five of them, including Lillian and her colleague Mary Graffam, set off immediately to help. The deep snow and bad roads made the normal 10-day journey stretch to 21. When they finally arrived, they found the city of Erzurum “one big hospital, every available building filled with sick and wounded.” However, before they could unpack, Lillian received news that Levon was desperately ill with typhus at a village near the war zone. It took her and Mary another nine hours to get to the village, listening to the “sound of the cannon most of the way.” Two days later Levon Sewny died. “The horror and sadness of his death cannot be described,” said Mary. “It took us two days to get the rudest kind of a box, which they finally managed by breaking up a door, and then we brought the body on a horse to Erzurum.” But Lillian had no time to mourn. On the day of their return, two of the Red Cross doctors succumbed to typhus. Within days, two nurses and the hospital’s druggist also contracted the highly contagious disease. Lillian and Mary nursed them and hundreds of other patients around the clock. The hospital was overflowing. People died at a rate of 15 per day. By the spring of 1915, Lillian was exhausted and demoralized. When the cycle of deportations and death of Armenians started in Sivas and elsewhere, there was little she could do. She returned to the United States for a much-needed rest. Read more: https://armenianweekly.com/2018/05/06/remembering-lillian-cole-sewny-on-national-nurses-day/#comment-952946

Armenia’s National Assembly Approves New Government Program Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan presenting his government’s program to parliament (Photo: Press service of the National Assembly of Armenia)YEREVAN—Armenia’s National Assembly approved on Thursday Armenia’s new government’s program with 62 votes for and 39 against. The government’s policy program calls for sweeping reforms and measures against corruption. The program also calls for snap parliamentary elections in the country. The program notes that Armenia’s current parliament does not reflect the “real political mood” of the people of Armenia and that free, fair, and democratic elections must be held within a year. Most of the 52 deputies representing the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) voted against the proposed program, though the party’s leadership ensured that some of its members backed the plan so that it would pass. Snap parliamentary elections would have been called for early next month if the program was not approved by the National Assembly. In his hour-long address to parliament, Prime minister Nikol Pashinyan did not specify possible election dates. The call for early elections are also backed by the Tsarukyan alliance and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), Pashinyan’s parliamentary partners According to RFE/RL’s Armenian service, the approved program commits Pashinyan’s newly appointed cabinet to reinforcing the rule of law, eliminating widespread corruption, and achieving substantial and inclusive economic growth. The program also looks to eliminate monopolies and to create equal business opportunities for all. Read more: https://armenianweekly.com/2018/06/07/national-assembly-approves-new-government-program/