Vartan Gregorian – a trailblazer from a different era

Vartan Gregorian who has just died was once described as “the impossibly distinguished one-man academy of arts, letters, and the humanities” and a “visionary and a living example of the modern man of letters, for whom education and knowledge is the key to opportunity and peace.”  He was a shining example of America’s immigrant policies of yesteryear.

  Born 8 April 1934 he was born in northern Persia to Christian Armenian parents and after his mother died when he was six, he was brought up by an illiterate, though ‘wise’ grandmother and a grandfather who owned camel caravans. He was educated latterly in Beirut and spoke Russian, Persian, Armenian, Turkish, Arabic and French. He came to the USA aged 24, speaking no English, intending to return to Beirut. He studied at Stanford University, completed a BA in two years with honours and earned a dual PhD in history and humanities (art history, philosophy, Romance languages, religion, classics.)

  He stayed in academia and in the 1980s served as president of the New York Public Library which he rescued from near poverty and restored it “to a center of New York cultural life”.

  He was a dynamically pro-active and innovative Sun Mars Uranus in Aries in an expansive and confident opposition to Jupiter square a determined and influential square to Pluto; with his Uranus Mars and widely Sun sextile Saturn in Aquarius.  With only Neptune in Virgo in earth, he could have been impractical but his fund-raising skills were extraordinary so it may depend on his birth time which isn’t known. Half his planets in Cardinal signs would give him a restless sense of initiative. A focal point Pluto, while not easy in adult life since it tends to run into resistance, would give him stamina, focus and a one-tracked obsession with fulfilling his goals. An influencer of a superior variety.