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Watertown Hood Rubber Co. was hub of ethnic neighborhood a century a

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  • Watertown Hood Rubber Co. was hub of ethnic neighborhood a century a

    `Little Armenia'
    Watertown's Hood Rubber Co. was hub of ethnic neighborhood a century ago,
    film recalls

    Filmmaker Roger Hagopian with Watertown resident Areka Der Kazarian,
    98, among the local Armenians featured in his latest documentary.
    (Jim Davis/Globe Staff) By Kathleen Moore
    Globe Correspondent / April 1, 2010


    It was demolished more than 40 years ago, but Watertown's Hood Rubber
    Co. never really disappeared from Areka Der Kazarian's memories. At
    98, she still smiles when someone mentions the once-bustling factory
    that gave her a job not long after she fled her native Armenia.

    `At 16, I went to work at Hood because there were no jobs for my
    brother, and I could make $18 to $20 a week,'' says the former
    conveyor-belt operator. `It was important to have that money because
    we had to eat.

    Areka Der Kazarian was not the only one.

    A newly released documentary, `Destination Watertown: The Armenians of
    Hood Rubber,'' is introducing local audiences to the `Little Armenia''
    that formed within the now-defunct sneaker and tire manufacturer
    during the first half of the 20th century.

    `Really, in some ways Hood Rubber was a sweat shop, and they worked
    under very trying conditions,'' said Roger K. Hagopian, an amateur
    filmmaker who produced and directed the 68-minute documentary. `But
    good or bad, it was the foundation of their community. When they
    remember Hood, they remember their parents, their grandparents, their
    families who worked there.''

    A self-employed businessman who calls Lexington home, Hagopian, 60, is
    long removed from the grueling factory work that allowed his
    grandmother to flourish in her adopted country.

    But Hagopian is never far from his history.

    Over the last 14 years, he has produced four other films that explore
    Armenian experience: `Memories of Marash,'' `Journey of an Armenian
    Family,'' `Our Boys,'' and `Memory Fragments of the Armenian
    Genocide.''

    `Destination Watertown,'' which Hagopian completed last year and
    debuted at the Watertown Free Public Library in December, is replete
    with charming black-and-white photographs and trembling news reels
    from the 1920s and '30s. It also gives a brief history of the Armenian
    migration that contributed to the plant's success. Narrator Robert
    Mirak, board president of the Armenian Cultural Foundation, gently
    introduces viewers to the gruesome backdrop - genocide - that prompted
    thousands of Armenians to move to Watertown around the time of World
    War I.

    But it is Hagopian's decision to give most of the air time to the
    former employees and neighbors of Hood Rubber that brings `Destination
    Watertown'' alive. Often salty, at times gauzy, their reminiscences
    lend an unmistakable grace to Watertown history.

    `You ask me what was the impact of the Hood Rubber Company on the
    neighborhood, and I'm puzzled,'' former Oak Street resident George
    Mooza says to an off-camera interviewer. `Hood Rubber was the
    neighborhood.''

    Mooza's observation is not too much of a stretch. Founded by Frederic
    and Arthur Hood in 1896, the Hood Rubber Co. was a major local
    employer for nearly 75 years, using as many as 10,000 laborers in its
    heyday. The multiacre complex in East Watertown included a fully
    automated factory, a research lab (believed to be the first of its
    kind in the country), and the Abraham Lincoln House, where workers
    could get medical services and tutoring in English. For the struggling
    immigrants who flocked to its gates each day, the most important thing
    it offered was a steady paycheck.


    `Word spread as far away as the Ottoman Empire that there was work to
    be found at a place called the Hood Rubber Company,'' Mirak reminds
    us. `By the end of the 1920s, approximately 3,500 Armenians, or 10
    percent of the population, were living in Watertown, and more than 500
    were working at Hood Rubber.''

    The working conditions that prevailed in many turn-of-the-century
    factories would shock modern sensibilities. Hood Rubber was no
    different.

    `I think if OSHA had known what went on, they'd have objected,'' said
    Mark Der Mugrditchian, a former worker.

    Areka Der Kazarian calmly recalls getting her right hand caught in the
    conveyor belt, causing an injury that kept her out of work for a
    month. Her ring finger has been set at a 45-degree angle ever
    since. The filmmaker's own grandmother, Hranoush Hagopian, was run
    over by a cart, one of many that transported materials around the
    mammoth plant. There were no lawsuits. There were no complaints.

    `They say I could have sued, but I didn't know any better,'' Der
    Kazarian says. `It was a job.''

    The air inside the plant was often infused with rubber dust, and its
    huge smokestack regularly spewed ominous black smoke into the
    air. Several former employees and neighbors interviewed by Hagopian
    said they suspect this contributed to the cancer that they or their
    relatives later developed.

    `The smell of burning rubber was like waking up and smelling the
    leaves,'' says Mooza. `If the wind was right . . . you could get the
    stockyards in Brighton and the fires from the junkyards in
    Watertown.''

    Long before there were focus groups or market surveys, Hood Rubber
    recruited dozens of local kids to test its sneakers, including the
    popular PF Flyer. These weekly distributions were more frenzied
    lotteries than sober consumer research, but no one seemed to notice.

    `The wearability of those sneakers was based on the activities of
    Watertown kids,'' says Leon Janikian, a former Dexter Avenue resident.

    `We used to ride our bikes and drag our feet so we'd get a new pair,''
    Der Mugrditchian admits.

    More than anything, the `sneaker tests'' divided the neighborhood into
    two groups: the ones who got a pair, and the ones who didn't. Decades
    later, many of Hagopian's subjects were still keenly aware of which
    group they fell into.

    `I'd wait until they opened. . . If they had your size, you'd get the
    shoe,'' says Katherine Kaloyanides. `I had small feet so it was almost
    an impossibility for me to get a pair. I don't think I ever got
    sneakers.''

    Rose Magarian had better luck.

    `I used to wait two to three hours to get a pair, but I was a good
    test girl,'' she says. `My mother had me running around all day.''

    Bob Sanasarian was not so blessed.

    `My mother thought it was a good thing that I never got any
    sneakers. She thought that I should only be wearing leather shoes.''

    Roger Hagopian's documentaries can been seen at the Armenian Library
    and Museum of America, 65 Main St., and purchased on DVD by contacting
    him at [email protected].

    © Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
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