The Renaisance Man

Essay by Christian DerderianA-, December 1996

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The Renaissance Man

The people with whom we associate in conjunction with our surroundings affect us in many aspects of our life. One prominent individual has had an everlasting affect on my life. He came to me when I was seventeen months old ,and ever since that day he has been with me, subtly guiding me through all the stages by my side throughout my life. I see his success as a motive to achieve my own ambitions. James Derderian, my father, adopted me, with his wife, Elizabeth, when I of my eighteen years. At the age of fifty-nine, when most people begin to think about retirement, he adopted me. I was the last of three children that he adopted starting when he was fifty-one years old. It is not only because of this that I feel influenced; it is his insatiable appetite for new challenges. His success in life, for me, acts as a guide which is use to lead me through my own life.

Coming to this country at the fragile age of five, not knowing one word of English, he has become a well known figure in his field of work. Armenia, the origin of my family, is where my father was born seventy-seven years ago. His very poor family fled from their town, which was in Turkey, to Everett, Massachusetts in nineteen twenty-eight. They lived several years in this suburb of Boston, until they were able to move to Haverhill to start a chicken farm. My father's journey began the first day of school when he was sent home because he could not ask to go to the bathroom in English. As he slowly learned the new culture he began to become more and more aware of his family's condition.

As a young adult, he...