Elizabeth Marks (Margosian) was born and grew up in an Armenian community in Watertown, Massachusetts, where she lived with her parents, brother, and her Armenian aunt and uncle. Most of her childhood friends were Armenian. With her Aunt Mary doing all the cooking, she learned to love the cuisine, and would spend hours in the kitchen watching her aunt cook. Though she spent long periods of time in the UK with her mother and away from her father and the Armenian community, Elizabeth counts among her treasures early childhood memories of her father telling her fanciful bedtime stories of a heroic young man and his adventures.
Bedros Margosian was born in Armenia and was fourteen years old when the atrocities of the Armenian genocide began. Through his intelligence and determination, he survived. Not much is known about what happened to him after the end of World War I. It’s believed he was recruited by the French Armenian Legion, which was affiliated with the legendary French Foreign Legion, and he became a mercenary. After finding his way to America to join his sister, he became an American citizen, attended and graduated from Boston University, and joined the U.S. Army. During World War II, he was with the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), the wartime intelligence agency and a predecessor of the CIA. It was during the war that he met a British woman in London and fell in love. They married in England and then came to the United States.
Upon returning to the US, he began writing. The rough manuscript for what would become Zaven’s Destiny remained unpublished until his daughter, Elizabeth, took on the project of completing it.
Bedros Margosian, a true hero, died in 1967.
