“There was some sort of chemistry between my two grandmothers,” said Seta Whitby, the Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of La Verne, as she told me the story of how her families met.

Seta’s family was part of the many survival stories of the Armenian Genocide. Her fathers family was from Iskenderun and there, they owned acres of a village. One day, one of the servants came over and told them that it wasn’t safe to stay, so they decided to pack up and leave. They packed up all their jewelry in a ceramic case and put cement on top of it and covered it with jam. The closest border from Iskenderun was the Syrian border. They reached the city of Aleppo and that’s how they survived the Genocide.

Her mother’s family had a house in Aleppo and they were living there at the time of the Genocide. They saw a family walking through the streets with no water or food, so they offered them some because they felt their pain. After noticing that one of the women was injured, they invited them to stay in their home and that’s when there was this chemistry between the two grandmothers. They ended up staying there by renting out a room to live in and that’s how her mother and father came together and got married.

One lesson that she holds close to her heart is one that her father taught her as a young child. “Never take anything for granted, never feel jealous of anyone else and feel happy for those who have reached that point.” She believes if you work as hard as you can, you can go anywhere you want and those were the values embedded in her as a child.

Getting Turkey and the U.S. to recognize the Genocide is big event that Armenians have been waiting for, for a long time. Seta is one of those people, but she fears for the lives of Armenians living in Turkey if it does. “What the Turkish Government will do to them as revenge is what worries me.” She hopes for the recognition and the Genocide Bill to get passed, but it’s the actions taken after the fact that keeps us all worried.