Aram-W6JY – the Armenian-American Radio Pioneer

As many of you know from my recent social media posts, I am striving to resurrect the marvelous hobby of amateur radio that I regretfully put into cold storage sixteen years ago due to other demands on my time, mostly work. One of the aspects of my attempt at restart this hobby, is the migration of old logbooks containing details of my radio contacts to more modern systems and standards. The old self-designed Paradox Database logbook contains no less than 15, 513 contacts, from nearly 200 countries around the world, making it by no means an easy task. The work is still continuing weeks after I began.

The bonus of the task are the nuggets of years past that I keep unexpectedly digging up almost on a daily basis. Yesterday, I stumbled upon one of the best treasures ever. While poring over the logbook looking for something else, the name “Aram” caught my eye. My logbook notes told me he was 95 years old in 1998 when we met over the radio.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the call sign W6JY on the Internet and what I saw stunned me. Aram was first licensed as an amateur radio operator way back in 1920. That was a full century ago! He was among the first fifty or so amateur radio licensees on the west coast and his first call sign was the now quaint-looking 6JY. With the restructuring of the licensing system, that changed to W6JY, a call sign that he held till his death in September 2001.

The revered call sign W6JY is now held by Aram’s friend Wolfgang Geihe (DJ4OA) at the request of the family. Wolf also provided the photograph of Aram, for which I am grateful. Aram’s daughter, Helen Pashgian, is none other than the renowned American visual artist and a leader of the ‘Light and Space’ movement of the ’60s.

Looking back, I am so grateful for that brief meeting with Aram via the marvel of amateur radio in July 1998. California, where Aram lived, was also that part of the world where one of my all-time favorite authors, William Saroyan, another illustrious son of the Armenian diaspora, had lived. The one regret that I have is that although I had read Saroyan years earlier and was not unfamiliar with the distinctively Armenian name, Aram, it had not rung a bell during our conversation, and as a result our chat did not touch upon anything related to Armenia or Saroyan.

God moves in mysterious ways. Years after this conversation, I would move to the United States and would also come to know Armenia, falling in love with the country and its people, so much so that I have been traveling to Armenia almost every year since my first visit in 2006.

I am blessed to have many Armenian friends, both in-country and elsewhere, now. But I realized today, twenty-two years later, that my first ever conversation with a person of Armenian origin was with Aram Pashgian – W6JY, even though I did not know it at that time. That conversation was by radio, and not in person. But the next one will be.

“Aram jan, I will look forward to our next ‘QSO’ (ham lingo for chat). That will be an ‘eyeball QSO’ (face-to-face conversation) and we will not require a radio.        ‘73!’ (Best wishes!) from Abie-VU2ABE/AB1F.”

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