Salt Lake resident Venus Aposhian Orullian - believed to be one of the oldest living Armenians in the United States - celebrates her 100th birthday on Wednesday, May 16.
Born in Allepo, Syria, of Armenian parents on May 16, 1890, Orullian was the oldest in a family of 10 children. In the "old country" she designed hand-woven carpets for her father, Zadik Aposhian, a carpet merchant.Orullian remembers that one day her father went to sell rugs to a Turkish leader and overheard them talking of genocide plans. (In 1894, the ruling Ottoman Turks decided that the Armenians were a dangerous foreign element and began a campaign to wipe them out, murdering 1.8 million in the next 25 years.) In 1908, after hearing at the neighborhood bakery that the Turks were coming, Zadik packed up the family and they left for America.
Aposhian and his wife, Katune, were delayed in England for medical reasons but sent the children on to New York, where they were met by missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The children were mistakenly sent to a polygamist colony on the Mexican border until the parents arrived and the family was reunited in Utah, their original destination.
Soon after, Venus married a fellow Armenian, Joseph Orullian on July 2, 1909. Joseph worked as a gardener on the Salt Lake Temple grounds and the couple lived a humble life, rearing nine children on a half-acre piece of land where Venus still resides. Her husband died in 1955.