Yeghiayan was born in Addis Ababa , Ethiopia to a wealthy Armenian family originally from the Ottoman Empire . His father Boghos , a native of Isparta , was an orphaned survivor of the World War I-era massacres and deportations of the Armenian Genocide . In Ethiopia , Boghos had worked his way up at an international trading firm . Yeghiayan 's mother , Aroussiag Terzian , had close relations with the Ethiopian royal family – her godmother was Menen Asfaw , the wife of Emperor Haile Selassie – and this relationship had afforded him and his two brothers the privilege to study abroad . At age eleven , he was sent to an American boarding school in Cyprus and in 1954 he arrived to study in the United States . He attended school at Indiana University for one year before being accepted to Berkeley , initially as a premed student , later changing his major and graduating with a Bachelor in history in 1959 . Yeghiayan was accepted to the University of California , Hastings College of the Law and completed his legal studies at Lincoln Law School , receiving his Juris Doctor ( J.D. ) in 1965 . After briefly working for a small firm in Oakland , he joined California Rural Legal Assistance ( CRLA )
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Vartkes Yeghiayan