Armen Aroyan, diasporan guide and chronicler of Armenian ancestral memory, dies at 82

Armen Aroyan, a longtime guide, documentarian and connector of diasporan Armenians to their ancestral homelands, passed away on Jan. 13, 2026. He was 82.

Born in 1943 in Cairo, Egypt, Aroyan was one of four children of Albert and Lucy Aroyan, whose families traced their roots to the Aintab region. He emigrated to the United States in 1962 and settled in Pasadena, Calif., where he earned engineering degrees from the University of Southern California and worked in the field for many years.

Alongside his professional career, Aroyan was deeply involved in Armenian communal and cultural life. He served for decades as choir director at the Armenian Cilicia Congregational Church in Pasadena and was a devoted collector and student of the Protestant Armenian musical tradition.

Beginning in the late 1980s, Aroyan became widely known for organizing and leading customized heritage trips to historic Armenian sites throughout Western Armenia in present-day Turkey. Between 1991 and 2016, he led approximately 100 trips with nearly 1,450 participants, many of whom he referred to as “pilgrims,” tailoring each journey to participants’ ancestral towns and villages. His work brought generations of diasporan Armenians into direct contact with places, landscapes and communities often known only through inherited memory.

Aroyan meticulously documented these journeys on video, interviewing remaining local Armenians and recording churches, villages and ruins that continue to bear traces of Armenian life. In 2018, he donated hundreds of videotapes from these travels to the USC Dornsife Institute of Armenian Studies, where they now form the Armen Aroyan Collection, a significant visual archive of diasporic return and historical memory.

His work as a guide and facilitator of ancestral reconnection was previously featured in the Weekly, including a 2011 profile marking the winding down of his two-decade career leading heritage tours for diasporan visitors.

Aroyan’s life work bridged faith, scholarship, travel and memory, leaving a lasting imprint on Armenian communal life and the documentation of a disappearing past. The Armenian Weekly extends its condolences to Aroyan’s family and to all those whose lives were shaped by his work.