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Sharkay Kletjian; oversaw growth of cleaning company

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  • Sharkay Kletjian; oversaw growth of cleaning company

    Boston Globe
    Jan 8 2005

    Sharkay Kletjian; oversaw growth of cleaning company
    By Gloria Negri, Globe Staff |

    As the daughter of immigrants, Sharkay (Gumushian) Kletjian worked
    hard to fulfill her own American dream and helped hundreds of other
    immigrants to achieve theirs.

    "Mrs. K set an example with her own hard work," said John Feitor of
    Medford, a native of Portugal who started out as a cleaner with Mrs.
    Kletjian's UNICCO janitorial and maintenance service company and
    retired as its executive senior vice president. "She was my anchor,
    my motivator."

    Mrs. Kletjian, who worked with her husband in UNICCO soon after he
    founded it in 1949 and continued to run it after his death in 1969,
    died Tuesday at Massachusetts General Hospital of kidney failure. She
    was 84 and lived in North Falmouth and Rancho Mirage, Calif.

    Born in Istanbul, Mrs. Kletjian was 3 months old when her parents
    fled the Armenian genocide in Turkey, came to this country, and
    settled in Somerville. Her father, Sempad, was a tailor. Her mother,
    Vasganous (Torissian), was a housewife. Mrs. Kletjian was the oldest
    of their four children. She was voted outstanding Latin student at
    Somerville High School and graduated in 1938 with a full scholarship
    to the former Burdett School of Business where she studied accounting
    and bookkeeping.

    She graduated from Burdett in 1940 and that same year married Herbert
    Kletjian, whose family had also fled the Armenian genocide. Mr.
    Kletjian had left school in the eighth grade to go to work and was a
    candy mixer at the Necco candy company in Cambridge, said their son,
    Robert T. of Andover. "Dad decided with a friend to make extra money
    by washing windows and cleaning floors," he said. The two men worked
    together for a time and then Mr. Kletjian bought out his partner.

    In the early days, UNICCO, the acronym for University Cleaning
    Company, was located in Central Square, Cambridge, with a very small
    staff. Robert recalled that his father would go out during the day
    dressed in a suit to recruit clients and then go out on cleaning jobs
    at night. Eventually, Mrs. Kletjian joined her husband in the office
    to do the bookkeeping.

    The couple's three sons, now executives of the company, started out
    scrubbing floors and doing other janitorial services. "My father
    worked us harder and paid us less than other employees," Robert said,
    "and my mother fully endorsed what he did."

    When Mr. Kletjian died in 1969 at the age of 48, Mrs. Kletjian and
    her sons took charge.

    "She was instrumental in growing the company into what it has
    become," Robert said. "She ran all the backroom operations and was
    treasurer through the mid-1990s."

    On its website, UNICCO, now based in the Auburndale village of
    Newton, describes itself as "one of North America's largest
    facilities outsourcing companies with over $700 million in annual
    sales, with 1,000 customers and 19,000 employees." The company has
    about 20 field offices around the country and in Canada, Robert said.

    Many immigrants, unable to speak English when they arrived, were
    given their first job at UNICCO and some rose to supervisory
    positions. John Correia of Arlington was one of them. He started out
    doing janitorial work and now heads UNICCO's New England Division.

    "When I arrived from Brazil, UNICCO was my first job in 1980,"
    Correia said. "Mrs. K related to immigrants well and understood the
    challenge of uprooting that we faced. She took a motherly interest in
    us. She had the rule: Everyone had to speak English in front of her.
    If we made a mistake, she corrected us, but always with a smile and
    in a friendly way."

    Feitor recalled arriving in the United States in 1970 without work or
    a word of English.

    "She always taught me to say, 'Yes, I can' when I thought I
    couldn't," Feitor said. "She talked to me like I was her own son. She
    screamed at me like I was one of them. When I came to this country I
    had dreams I did not think I could fulfill. I saw a star very far
    away. It was success. Mrs. K helped me reach that star."

    Besides her son, Mrs. Kletjian leaves two other sons, Steven C. of
    Osterville, and Richard J. of Hingham; a daughter, Dianne of
    Hamilton; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

    Funeral services will be held at at 11 a.m. today at Holy Trinity
    Armenian Apostolic Church in Cambridge. Burial will be at Forest
    Hills Cemetery in Boston.
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