#raytravis

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

A father to the fatherless: Ray Travis reprised

By Jonathan Monfiletto

(An article similar to this one appeared on this Oliver's Travels blog in October 2022. However, at that time, I had only browsed the Yates County History Center's subject file on Ray Travis - containing newspaper articles and other documents - in order to write that article. Because of a recent research inquiry, I felt the impetus to browse our Ray Travis archival collection - containing his personal papers and letters - and write another article about this amazing man and his life and work).

Ray Travis never married nor had children, but it is said more than a million descendants can credit their existence to him. Not his direct descendants, of course, but instead the descendants of the more than a thousand Armenian children he – termed as “The humanitarian of Himrod” in a June 2016 article in The Chronicle-Express – helped protect and defend in Turkey in the aftermath of World War I.

The humanitarian of Himrod, however, was not a native of Yates County. Ray Paris Travis was born August 9, 1889 in Ionia, Michigan to Silas and Cynthia Lyford Travis, who had moved to Michigan from Yates County. When Travis was 3 years old, the family moved back to Himrod, where Travis and his two brothers, Jay and Claude, and his sister, Fanny, grew up on their father’s farm on Chubb Hollow Road. After graduating from Penn Yan Academy, Keuka Institute, and the Penn Yan Teachers Training Class, Travis began teaching in a rural schoolhouse in Himrod in September 1907 and taught school until June 1917.

At that point, although he was nearly 28 years old and well above the required age of conscription, Travis felt the call to serve his country and enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War I. He served in the quartermaster corps with Company D, 502nd Engineers at Engineers Camp, Base Hospital No. 8 in France. Serving from September 1917 until July 1919, Travis reached the rank of sergeant.

Following the war, Travis sought his discharge so he could support relief efforts in Europe and the Middle East through the YMCA and the U.S. Food Administration Grain Corporation. By November 1919, he became the director of an orphanage run by Near East Relief in Aintab, Turkey (now known as Gaziantep, the capital of Gaziantep Province and the most populous city in Turkey’s Southeastern Anatolia Region), using his experience as a teacher.

During World War I, the Ottoman Empire – which, until the end of the war, controlled Turkey as well as parts of Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East – had deported its minority Armenian population and committed a genocide against this group of people. After the war, as Travis took the helm of the orphanage, Armenians began returning to their native land, including orphaned children who had survived the genocide. Travis’ task as headmaster was to take care of these children and provide for their needs.

That task proved difficult. In early 1920, Turkish nationalist forces attacked Cilicia – then an autonomous Armenian republic occupied by the French military – and laid siege to several cities. In the YCHC collection are typewritten extracts from the diary of a YMCA Secretary Crathern detailing the siege of Marash from January 20 to February 14, 1920 and a diary – both typewritten and handwritten – from Travis covering the siege of Aintab from April 1 to May 30, 1920. Indeed, heavy fighting between Turkish nationalists and local Armenians, who organized their own self-defense forces when French troops left the city, broke out on April 1 and lasted until June with a brief ceasefire in between.

“This will give you an idea of what happened in Marash last winter when from 8,000 to 10,000 Armenians were massacred. And all this when French soldiers were supposed to be there for their protection! My diary of the Aintab trouble I will send soon,” Travis wrote to an unknown addressee on September 7, 1920 at the end of one copy of Crathern’s diary.

During the fighting, Travis used his military knowledge to barricade and fortify the orphanage and used his position to secure rifles, ammunition, and grenades from a French army base to defend the orphanage. He welcomed all Armenians who sought refuge inside the orphanage’s compound, and he moved children from another orphanage, located in the city’s Turkish neighborhood, to an American hospital in the Armenian neighborhood.

When the French military left Aintab on June 2, Travis and approximately 800 orphans of Near East Relief followed them on a journey that eventually led them to Beirut, Syria (whose territory then included Lebanon). Traveling by foot, truck, and train and staying in tents, a cave, and a ruined building, Travis, the teachers, and the children established a new Near East Relief orphanage in Jubeil, north of Beirut.

One of the children who came under Travis’ care in Aintab and trekked with him to Beirut was Karnig Panian, who captured his story as an Armenian orphan in his memoir, “Goodbye, Antoura.” Parnian recalled Travis as both a fierce protector and kind provider of the children.

“He had a bright smile, blond hair, and penetrating eyes, and when he walked, it was as if the earth shook beneath his feet. But this giant of a man had a soft, gentle soul. He would chat with us, crack jokes, and take part in our games. He loved us with all his heart, and he soon gained our confidence and friendship, becoming a surrogate father to all,” Parnian wrote. “During the day, he was almost always with us. At night, he looked into our bedrooms, covering the boys who had kicked off their blankets in their sleep. He often appeared in our classrooms, and he made sure we were clean and well groomed. He even tasted all of the food before it was served to us, ensuring that it was up to his standards.”

Once secure in Jubeil, Travis worked with the American University of Beirut to help the children under his care obtain a college education. He left his work with Near East Relief in the spring of 1925 – apparently amid the closure of the orphanage in Jubeil – and returned to America. He apparently tried to secure a teaching position, according to his papers, but instead found a position as an inspector with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, then under the U.S. Department of Labor and later the Department of Justice.

Stationed in Texas and Arizona in the start of his career, Travis sought a transfer to Niagara Falls to be closer to his family in Himrod – particularly his elderly parents – and later worked in Buffalo and Syracuse as well. He seemed to bring his stern but kind, serious yet caring, approach from his relief work to his immigration career. His papers include notes of appreciation for his efforts to help immigrants obtain their American citizenship and begin a new life.

On a special assignment, Travis was sent to the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, when German, Italian, and Japanese diplomats in America were detained during World War II. He subsequently received a thank you letter from the group of diplomats who stayed there. “During this period, your tireless efforts to alleviate our anxieties has touched us all profoundly. In spite of your official capacity, which held you within certain limits, we all felt that we had your wholehearted support, and your extreme kindness permitted us to approach you as a friend,” reads the letter, dated June 10, 1942.

During his immigration career, Travis visited his family in Himrod on the weekends, helping out with groceries during the Great Depression and once bringing new bicycles for the children for Christmas. After his retirement in 1954, Ray moved back to Himrod to care for his sister, who was widowed and blind. Ray died on September 21, 1965 at age 76 and is buried with his parents, siblings, and their families in Lakeview Cemetery in Penn Yan.

A Hometown Hero banner, installed by Johnston-Costello American Legion Post 355, honoring Travis and his World War I service recently went up on East Main Street in Penn Yan. While recognizing Travis’ military service, perhaps it also pays tribute to his service to the Armenian children, new immigrants to America, and many other people he encountered.

In the article in The Chronicle-Express, John Christensen conveyed Travis’ legacy this way: “Never having married and never having children, Ray Travis might have easily slipped away unremembered as those who know him pass on. But that is not true. … Ray Travis did have children, thousands of them, and all of them boys. And those children’s children owe their very lives to his life and the devotion he showed all those orphaned boys nearly a century ago.”

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

A father to the fatherless

By Jonathan Monfiletto

Ray Travis never married nor had children, but it is said more than a million descendants can credit their existence to him. Not the direct descendants of Mr. Travis, of course, but instead the descendants of the more than a thousand Armenian children he – termed in a 2016 newspaper article as “The humanitarian of Himrod” – helped protect and defend in the aftermath of World War I.

If there were ever some sort of Yates County hall of fame – perhaps celebrating county natives who went on to do heroic and noble deeds in their lives, whether in or out of the area – then I have no doubt Ray Travis would be inducted in the first class. Even if few people nowadays know his name. Our family files contain a plethora of information about this courageous man, and our archival collections include a box of Mr. Travis’ personal letters and papers. But a June 22, 2016 article in The Chronicle-Express – capturing the moment at the Yates County History Center when a great-nephew of Mr. Travis met a brother and sister who are grandchildren of an orphan who survived the Armenian genocide, much like the orphans Mr. Travis helped rescue a century before – paints the picture of Mr. Travis’ story the best, both detailed and succinct at the same time.

According to the article, Mr. Travis – about 25 years old when World War I began in 1914 – was teaching about 20 children in a one-room schoolhouse in Himrod. Though he was older than the required age of conscription, Ray volunteered for the war in France; because of his career as a schoolteacher, he was assigned as an Army quartermaster. When the war ended and the Ottoman Empire surrendered, Ray sought and received special permission to leave the Army and become a relief worker in the Near East.

During the war, the Ottoman Turks turned on the native Armenian Christian population living in east and central Turkey; the nationalist Turkish revolution against the Ottoman Empire caused even more suffering to the Armenian people. Ray was the headmaster of one of the orphanages – often containing children whose families had been killed while fleeing Turkey or had died as refugees in Syria – and he fought, literally, to protect the children under his care and eventually led them and their teachers to safety in Lebanon.

Karning Panian, one of the orphans in Ray’s charge, describes this kind and loving yet strong and stern headmaster in his memoir “Goodbye, Antoura.” When ethnic unrest came to the city where Ray’s orphanage was located, he put his military training to use by barricading the building, turning it into a fortress under siege, and welcoming into the grounds any Armenians – not just orphans – who needed a safe place. As an American, Ray was able to travel to a nearby French army base and secure rifles, ammunition, and even grenades to defend the orphanage. He evacuated the orphans to a nearby cave once shelling began and took his place among his fellow teachers and other men to defend them there.

Once the Turkish Nationalists officially toppled the Ottoman Empire, Ray and his orphans evacuated to Lebanon, traveling on foot and then by truck and train and gathering more orphans and teachers and others who were fleeing along the way. Eventually, the group of refugees spent several weeks in tents before finding a new home in a ruined building in Lebanon. Whether in a cave or in tents or in a ruined building, though, as Panian remembered, Ray made sure the orphans’ school lessons continued on schedule.

After the new orphanage was rebuilt out of the ruins and the 1,200 orphans were safe and secure in their new home, Ray returned to the United States in 1923 and worked as a division director for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, first in Texas and Arizona and later in Syracuse and Buffalo. He visited his family in Himrod on the weekends, helping out with groceries during the Great Depression and bringing new bicycles for the children. Before his retirement in 1954, Ray helped many immigrants secure their residency and citizenship, continuing a commitment to duty and kindness he had begun overseas.

After his retirement, Ray moved back to Himrod to care for his sister, Fanny, who was widowed and blind. Ray died in 1965, remembered by his great-nephew as generous but stern and fastidious. The article in The Chronicle-Express sums up Ray’s legacy this way: “(He) did have children, thousands of them, and all of them boys. And those children’s children owe their very lives to his life and the devotion he showed all those orphaned boys nearly a century ago.”