Zenas Kevorkian photographs and other material (MSS.42)

Biographical/Historical Note

Zenas Kevorkian (1910-1991) was a career educator, a United States Naval Officer during World War II, and a hobbyist photographer in Rhode Island. In 1934 he graduated from Brown University with a major in history and a minor in education. He attended Brown Graduate School and worked as a student teacher in history at Central High School in Providence from 1934-35. After this he took numerous extension courses at Rhode Island College of Education and taught general science, mathematics, and journalism at Roger Williams Junior High School.

In 1942, Kevorkian left Rhode Island and his teaching job to join the United States Navy. He was commissioned as an ensign. He served as an executive officer, and then commanding officer, in the Mediterranean for seventeen months, taking part in twelve invasions in North Africa and southern parts of Italy. After further training in the United States, he served as a commanding officer in the South Pacific for twenty-two months, where he was in the initial invasion of Okinawa. Kevorkian was released to inactive duty as a senior grade lieutenant.

After returning from active military duty, Kevorkian worked as a personnel manager for industry in Woonsocket from 1946 until 1949, when he returned to education to work as a guidance counselor and history teacher at Cranston High School East. In 1958, he became Chairman of the Social Studies Department at Cranston High School West, where we worked for over ten years. While working in the Cranston high schools, he also established and directed adult education programs in Cranston. In 1955 he became Director of the Cranston Adult Education Program, and in 1966 he became Director of the Cranston Adult Basic Education Program. In 1970 he left Cranston High School West to serve as the full-time Director of Adult and Continuing Education for the Cranston School Department until his retirement in 1974.

Throughout his career, Kevorkian was active in over a dozen local, regional, and national educational professional associations. Among them, he served as President of the Barnard Club (1962-63), President of the Rhode Island Association of Public School Adult Education (1966-68), and Chairman of the State Membership Committee of the National Association of Public Continuing Education’s for fourteen years. Kevorkian was also deeply committed to numerous community, fraternal, religious, and Armenian organizations. He served on the boards of the Cranston Committee for Better Schools, the Cranston Historical Society, and the International Institute of Providence. He was active in the Armenian Missionary Association of America, and he served as communicant and deacon of the Armenian Euphrates Evangelical Church of Providence.