His family left Marash on February 9 , 1920 , just ten days after Ben was born . They left during the Armenian Genocide , as Turkish forces reached the city , while the French retreated . While escaping persecution , the infant was dropped in the snow in the mountains while the family was climbing , thinking he was dead , but was picked up only when he began to cry . They arrived , first , in Boston and subsequently settled in Stoneham , Massachusetts . His father was a pastor at several Armenian churches in the Boston area ( in Watertown , Cambridge ) and Worcester . He had taken courses at the Harvard Divinity School and had been ordained . His mother was diagnosed with tuberculosis almost immediately after arrival in Boston and died three years later , after spending some time hospitalized in sanitariums . Bagdikian was known throughout his life as Ben , though his baptismal name was Ben-Hur , after the Christian-themed historical novel '' Ben-Hur : A Tale of the Christ '' by Lew Wallace . Bagdikian grew up during the Great Depression , which , according to Robert D. McFadden , enforced a " passion for social justice that shaped his reporting . " He described himself as an " Armenian overlaid by , of all things , the culture of New England Yankee . " Due to his father 's role , Bagdikian regularly attended sermons and " disliked the avenging God of the Old Testament and was outraged when Abraham was prepared to obey the order to sacrifice his son as a gesture of faith . " Later in adulthood , Bagdikian became a member of the First Unitarian Church of Providence , a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Rhode Island
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Ben Bagdikian