Steve Kerr
LOS ANGELES—The Armenian National Committee of America – Western Region (ANCA-WR) announced that Golden State Warriors head coach and six time NBA champion Steve Kerr and the Kerr family will be honored with the 2016 ANCA-WR Humanitarian Award in recognition of their exemplary work through three generations, starting with the Near East Relief during and after the Armenian Genocide and continuing through the present time. The Kerr family will accept the award at the Gala Banquet on Sunday, October 16, 2016 at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles and a special video presentation by Coach Kerr will be shared with attendees.
Kerr’s grandparents, the late Dr. Stanley E. Kerr and his wife Elsa Reckman Kerr, were instrumental in establishing the Near East Relief, the unprecedented American campaign of international humanitarian assistance which saved and sustained hundreds of thousands of Armenian Genocide survivors from 1915 to 1930.
The Kerr family at home in the Pacific Palisades, summer 1984. Left to right: Steve, Ann, John, Susan, Andrew – Photo Source Ann Kerr
In 1919, Stanley Kerr, who was a junior officer with the US Medical Corps, transferred to Marash, in central Anatolia, where he headed the American relief operations and assisted thousands of Armenians left behind by the French. In 1922, he met his wife Elsa in Marash, where she worked as a schoolteacher. They later married in Beirut, where they ran a Near East Relief orphanage for Armenian children at Nahr Ibrahim, Lebanon.
In 1925, Stanley Kerr earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, a field where he distinguished himself, and returned to Lebanon to chair the Department of Biochemistry of the American University of Beirut. In 1965, while Elsa served as dean of women. Stanley retired in 1965 with the rank of Distinguished Professor and was awarded the Order of Merit from the Republic of Lebanon.
Eleven members of the Near East Relief in Marash, 1921. Stanley Kerr is pictured in the top row, first from the left. – Photo Source Dr. Douglas S. Kerr
Dr. Stanley Kerr passed away in December 1976 and left as part of his legacy, The Lions of Marash: Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief, 1919-1922 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1973), a memoir documenting his eye-witness accounts of the Armenian Genocide.
“I was aware of my grandparents running an orphanage in Marash and eventually finding Beirut through their travels. I have a great deal of pride in knowing how much they helped,â€
