Monte Melkonian

Merzifon's population at the time was 23,475 but was almost completely devoid of its once 17,000-strong Armenian population that was wiped out during the Armenian genocide in 1915.

They did find one Armenian family of the three that was living in the town, however, Melkonian soon learned that the only reason this was so, was because the head of the family in 1915 had exchanged the safety of his family in return for identifying all the Armenians in the town to Turkish authorities during the genocide.

Melkonian would later confide to his wife that "he was never the same after that visit....He saw the place that had been lost."

Upon his return to California, Melkonian returned to his education.

In high school, he was exceeding all standards and having a hard time finding new academic challenges.

Instead of graduating high school early, as was suggested by his principal, Melkonian found an alternative thanks to his father: a study abroad program in East Asia.

At the age of 15, Melkonian traveled to Japan for a new chapter in his young life, namely to study martial arts and the Japanese language.

While there, he began teaching English, which helped finance his travels through several Southeast Asian countries.

This introduced him to several new cultures, new philosophies, new languages, and in several cases, like his travels through Vietnam (shortly before the Fall of Saigon), new skills that would become immensely valuable in his later life as a soldier.

Returning to the United States, he graduated from high school and entered the University of California, Berkeley with Regents Scholarship, majoring in ancient Asian history and Archeology.

Monte Melkonian (Մոնթէ Մելքոնեան; 25 November 1957 – 12 June 1993) was an Armenian-American revolutionary and left-wing nationalist militant.

He was a commander in the Artsakh Defence Army and was killed while fighting against Azerbaijan in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.

Melkonian was born on 25 November 1957, at Visalia Municipal Hospital in Visalia, California, to Charles (1918−2006) and Zabel Melkonian (1920−2012).

He was the third of four children born to a self-employed cabinetmaker and an elementary-school teacher.

By all accounts, Melkonian was described as an all-American child who joined the Boy Scouts and was a pitcher in Little League baseball.

He also played the clarinet.

Melkonian's parents rarely talked about their Armenian heritage with their children, often referring to the place of their ancestors as the "Old Country."

His interest in his background only sparked at the age of eleven, when his family went on a year-long trip to Europe in 1969.

While taking Spanish language courses in Spain, his teacher had posed him the question of where he was from.

Dissatisfied with Melkonian's answer of "California", the teacher rephrased the question by asking "where did your ancestors come from?"

His brother Markar Melkonian remarked that "her image of us was not at all like our image of ourselves. She did not view us as the Americans we had always assumed we were."

From this moment on, for days and months to come, Markar continues, "Monte pondered [their teacher Señorita] Blanca's question Where are you from?"

In the spring of that year, the family also traveled across Turkey to visit the town of Merzifon, where Melkonian's maternal grandparents were from.

Born in California, Melkonian left the United States and arrived in Iran as a teacher in 1978, amidst the Iranian Revolution.

He took part in demonstrations against Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and subsequently travelled to Lebanon to serve with a Beirut-based Armenian militia fighting in the Lebanese Civil War.

In 1978 he helped to organize an exhibition of Armenian cultural artifacts at one of the university's libraries.

The section of the exhibit dealing with the Armenian genocide was removed by university authorities at the request of the Turkish consul general in San Francisco.

The display that was removed was eventually reinstalled following a campus protest movement.

Melkonian eventually completed his undergraduate work in under three years.

Upon graduating, he was accepted into the archeology graduate program at the University of Oxford.

Melkonian was active in Bourj Hammoud, and was one of the planners of the Turkish consulate attack in Paris in 1981.

He was later arrested and imprisoned in France.

With ASALA, Melkonian fought against various right-wing Lebanese militias around in and around Beirut, and had also taken part in combat against Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War.

Over the course of his military career, Melkonian had adopted a number of alias, including Abu Sindi, Timothy Sean McCormack, and Saro.

During the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, many of the Armenian soldiers under his command referred to him as Avo (Աւօ).

He was released in 1989 and acquired a visa to travel to Armenia in 1990.

Prior to the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, during which he commanded an estimated 4,000 Armenian troops, Melkonian had no official service record in any country's armed forces.

Instead, his military experience came from his activity in ASALA during the Lebanese Civil War.

On 12 June 1993, Melkonian was killed by Azerbaijani soldiers while he was surveying the village of Mərzili with five other Armenian soldiers after a battle.

He was buried at Yerablur, a military cemetery in the Armenian capital city of Yerevan, and was posthumously conferred the title of National Hero of Armenia in 1996.