Fresno Unified unveils Tatarian Elementary, the district’s first school named for Armenian
A garland of bright red, blue and orange balloons — the colors of the Armenian flag — started popping one by one in the rising heat Wednesday morning outside of Fresno Unified’s H. Roger Tatarian Elementary.
But the speakers from Fresno Unified, Fresno State and the local journalism community who stood before it only noticed every so often, much more focused on the task at hand: celebrating the late Tatarian himself.
He was the first Armenian-American to serve as the namesake for a Fresno Unified school after the FUSD board’s vote in October 2021. Wednesday’s celebration emphasized the importance of the name for Fresno’s Armenian community, with several odes to Armenian culture: including food, music and multiple performances from the Armenian Dance Group of Fresno.
The significance of the renaming is even broader than that, however, speakers said, as Tatarian set an example for students, educators and journalists throughout Fresno and beyond.
Tatarian, a celebrated journalist educated in FUSD schools and at Fresno State, traveled the world as a World War II correspondent and eventually the editor-in-chief of United Press International. After 34 years there, Tatarian returned to his alma mater Fresno State to join the journalism faculty.
But his path with reporting all began with the encouragement of the vice principal at FUSD’s now-closed Longfellow Junior High, when she encouraged Tatarian to join the school newspaper.
“It proves one educator can change the trajectory of a kid’s life if they just ask the right questions at the right time,” said Fresno Unified Superintendent Bob Nelson.
His story also shows how mutually rewarding it is when the Central Valley’s “best and brightest” choose to come back “to pay it again forward for the people that are here,” Nelson said.
Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval, who also spoke at Wednesday’s event, called Tatarian’s path a “hero’s journey.”
For Fresno’s Mark Arax, Tatarian was a life-changing teacher, he said Wednesday in an emotional speech. Arax met Tatarian as a student at Fresno State, where Tatarian became a mentor and father figure whose influence he’s felt throughout his own journalism career.
Arax was one of the most vocal in the push from Fresno’s Armenian community to rename the school previously known as Forkner Elementary after Tatarian. Arax brought to light the discrimination of the previous namesake, Fresno developer Jesse Clayton Forkner, against Armenians and people of color in the 1930s through exclusionary land sales.
“It is fitting what we have done here: the taking down of one name and the rising up of another name. It is not without pain. No reckoning with the past, no redress of historical wrong, ever is,” Arax said Wednesday.
Now, Tatarian’s legacy of journalism education may also continue at the school named after him, Tatarian Elementary Principal Michele Markarian said Wednesday.
The school’s administration is currently in talks with Fresno State leaders, including Jim Boren, executive director of Fresno State’s Institute for Media and Public Trust, about a partnership to teach journalism skills to Tatarian students.
Boren, a former Fresno Bee editor, told the Education Lab that he and the elementary school’s leadership are still hammering out the details, but he’s hopeful the program will send Fresno State instructors to the school to teach multimedia and reporting skills at an earlier age.
“Mr. Tatarian would be proud to know that the next generation of journalists will begin here at H. Roger Tatarian Elementary School,” Markarian said.
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