My Father, The Doctor

During his long life, Dr. Leon Magarian knew both tragedy and triumph. Born in 1882, young Leon’s life in Armenia was upended during the latter part of the century by the brutal rule of the Ottoman Empire. Devout Christians, his family narrowly survived the 1894-1896 Hamidian Massacre, during which 350,000 of Leon’s fellow countrymen were slaughtered at the hands of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who considered Christian Armenians a threat to Muslim Turks. To escape the increasing hostilities, Leon and his older brother, Armanag, sailed to America in 1907 to establish a home and a bakery in East St. Louis, Illinois. In 1910, Leon returned to Armenia to rescue the rest of the family. Unfortunately, his father died before they could make the journey to America. In 1912, most of the family, including Armanag’s wife and their children, elected to leave with Leon, but a brother who remained behind was shot and killed by the Turks.A year after they were reunited, Armanag and his wife had a son. But their joy was cut short when three-year-old Alphonse was kidnapped and brutally murdered. The killing of their youngest member shook the family to the core, but they somehow carried on, determined to make America their home despite this terrible loss. Leon had little interest in the bakery. He always had his nose stuck in a book, and the family thought he’d become a professor. But fate intervened, and a discussion with their family doctor set Leon on the course to becoming a successful physician.During his decades as a doctor, Leon embraced the advances in technology and pharmaceuticals that gave doctors greater insight into the illnesses plaguing their patients and better means to treat them. However, he was leery of the shift from making house calls to increasingly corporatized medicine, and the erosion of the doctor-patient relationship. Despite everything, Leon always remained steadfast in his convictions-above all, a doctor must listen to his patients and show compassion for their struggles-convictions that Leon passed on to his sons as his legacy.