[photo credit: City of Pasadena]
Their story reaches the Lamanda Park Branch Library on Saturday — one day after Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. Dr. Kay Mouradian, Flora’s daughter, wrote and narrated “My Mother’s Voice,” a 2012 documentary that traces Flora’s journey from the death marches to America, where she arrived at 18 to marry a man she knew only from a photograph. That man was Mouradian’s father.
The free program begins at 1 p.m. at the library, 140 S. Altadena Dr., and runs until 3:30 p.m. The 30-minute film will be followed by a presentation and audience question-and-answer session. A second program at 2:15 p.m. features longtime friends Meri and Elen presenting a personal travelogue of their trips to Armenia, with photographs, artifacts, and historical information about Yerevan and the countryside beyond, according to the City of Pasadena event listing. Both portions are for ages 13 and up.
Mouradian, a professor emerita from the Los Angeles Community Colleges, spent a decade researching the genocide in libraries, bookshops, and other countries, retracing the deportation route her mother traveled from her village to Aleppo and through the desert, according to a profile in the Armenian Mirror-Spectator. She holds a doctorate in education from Nova Southeastern University and degrees from Boston University and UCLA.
Mark Friedman, the sound designer who helped produce the documentary, told the Daily Bruin that following one person’s life “has a lot of meaning and really affects people in the way we wanted them to be affected.”
The screening is part of a month of Armenian-focused programming across the Pasadena Public Library system. The Santa Catalina Branch Library hosted a forget-me-not cross stitch workshop — the forget-me-not is a symbol of genocide remembrance — and the San Rafael Branch Library screened Sergei Parajanov’s “The Color of Pomegranates.” The library has also curated a reading list of titles by Armenian authors, according to a City of Pasadena press release.
The programming arrives during a period of formal recognition at both the city and county levels. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on April 7 to proclaim April 2026 Armenian History Month, the 10th consecutive year for the designation, according to Pasadena Now. The motion was authored by 5th District Supervisor Kathryn Barger and 4th District Supervisor Janice Hahn. Census estimates place the county’s Armenian population at approximately 188,000 residents, the largest outside Armenia itself.
“Los Angeles County is the proud home to the largest population of Armenians outside of Armenia,” Hahn said in a statement from the supervisors’ offices.
Survivors of the 1915 genocide who initially settled on the East Coast gradually moved westward, establishing roots in Fresno and San Francisco and eventually in Burbank, Glendale, and Pasadena, according to Local News Pasadena. In Pasadena, Mayor Victor M. Gordo proclaimed April 24, 2026, a Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide. The city’s proclamation noted that the genocide, perpetrated by the Turkish government beginning in 1915, “continued until 1923 and resulted in the death of 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children.” Pasadena dedicated an Armenian Genocide Memorial in Memorial Park in April 2015, marking the centennial.
For more information, call the Lamanda Park Branch Library at (626) 744-7266 or visit cityofpasadena.net/library.
When Mouradian was growing up in Boston, her mother would tell stories of her life in Turkey. They went in one ear and out the other, Mouradian has said. She was too busy trying to be an American kid. Decades later, when Flora fell ill, she told her daughter to write a book about her life. Mouradian never stopped.
AN AFTERNOON OF ARMENIAN HISTORY & HERITAGE Date & Time: Saturday, April 25, 2026, 1:00 PM – 3:30 PM | Venue: Lamanda Park Branch Library, 140 S. Altadena Dr., Pasadena, CA 91107 | For more information call: 626-744-7266 | Or click here: https://www.cityofpasadena.net/library/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D197943400
