Turkish Forum

Tag: Turks in USA

  • Janset Nahum, nurse – baltimoresun.com

    Janset Nahum, nurse – baltimoresun.com

    By Frederick N. Rasmussen, The Baltimore Sun

    4:41 p.m. EDT, March 15, 2012

    Janset Nahum, a registered nurse and neighborhood activist who was known as the “Unofficial Mayor of Sugarville,” died March 9 of lung cancer at Gilchrist Hospice in Towson.

    She was 79.

    Janset Aranlar was born in Adapazari, near Istanbul, one of three children. After her father died when she was 2, her mother was unable to care for her, and she was put up for adoption.

    “She was adopted by a wonderful couple who adored and raised her,” said her husband of 50 years, Dr. Albert Nahum, a retired internist and former chief of staff at the old Church Home Hospital.

    After graduating from high school, she earned her nursing degree with honors in three years from an Istanbul nursing school, Dr. Nahum said.

    She taught nursing in Ankara and Istanbul, and while working as an operating room nurse at a hospital in Samsun, Turkey, she met and fell in love with Dr. Nahum, who had just started his residency in internal medicine.

    “I was immediately attracted to her charm, wit and beauty,” he said. “Although I was Jewish and she was Muslim, we overcame the barrier of mixed marriages at that time.”

    They married in 1961 and moved from Turkey to Durham, N.C. Two years later, they moved to Baltimore, and for the last 43 years, lived in the Sugarville neighborhood near Pikesville, across from Druid Ridge Cemetery.

    “It’s called Sugarville because the houses were built in the 1950s by Gordon Sugar,” said Alan P. Zukerberg who is president of Long Meadow Association Inc., Sugarville’s neighborhood association.

    “Janset was a wonderful and warm person, and that’s why she was called the ‘Unofficial Mayor of Sugarville,’” said Mr. Zukerberg.

    “She was head of the association’s welcoming committee, and she’d take over a bottle of wine and welcome new residents. She was hospitable to the nth degree,” he said. “She always had a big smile and exemplified what a good neighbor should be.”

    When immigrants moved into the neighborhood, it was Mrs. Nahum who made them feel welcome.

    “If they need help or advice or guidance, Janset was the go-to person. She gave them confidence and was a source of strength,” said Mr. Zukerberg. “She’d even help them get jobs. She would do whatever she could to help ease their burdens.”

    Mrs. Nahum was a great walker and regularly made her way through the streets of Sugarville.

    “She’d be out there talking to people. She certainly dispelled the notion that suburbanites don’t know or talk to their neighbors,” said Mr. Zukerberg.

    Mrs. Nahum was an avid gardener and was always distributing plants from her Longmeadow Road home to Sugarville residents.

    “I remember looking out the window one day and she was planting plants in my yard that came from her garden,” said Mr. Zukerberg. “She’d do it without asking and beautified our neighborhood for beauty’s sake.”

    An artist, Mrs. Nahum painted and worked in clay, Lucite and Plexiglas. For a number of years, she owned and operated a business that preserved wedding bouquets in what she called a “memory box.”

    “She was the most open, warm and loving person I think that I’ve ever known,” said Rabbi Steven Fink, who conducted Mrs. Nahum’s service at Temple Oheb Shalom on Monday. It was her wish that she be buried according to Jewish customs.

    “She was effusive and affectionate and reached out to people,” said Rabbi Fink. “Just recently, she reached out to an Afghan women she had met at an Asian market on Route 40 and hired her to cook for her.”

    Mrs. Nahum eagerly welcomed her three sons’ friends into her home.

    “Janset was a second mother to the children of the neighborhood,” Rabbi Fink said in his eulogy. “There is an entire generation of boys who grew up in Pikesville, now middle-aged, who have a great fondness for Turkish food.”

    Rabbi Fink recalled in his eulogy that Mrs. Nahum never locked her front door.

    “She did not lock her door because she wanted people to come in and talk. A visit was not complete without having some of her delicious Turkish specialties and taking spinach pies home,” he said. “One never left her house without a gift bag of food.”

    Mrs. Nahum enjoyed traveling to Turkey and Israel.

    She had been president of the Baltimore Medical Society Auxiliary and was a member of Hadassah and True Sister Inc.

    In addition to her husband, Mrs. Nahum is survived by her three sons, Aslan Nahum of Owings Mills, Altan Nahum of Boulder, Colo., and Dr. Elmer Nahum of Pittsburgh; and four grandchildren.

    via Janset Nahum, nurse – baltimoresun.com.

  • Arif Mardin

    Arif Mardin

    Arif Mardin (March 15, 1932 – June 25, 2006) was a Turkish-American music producer, who worked with hundreds of artists across many different styles of music, including jazz, rock, soul, disco, and country. He worked at Atlantic Records for over 30 years, as both an assistant, producer, arranger, studio manager, and vice president, before moving to EMI and serving as vice president and general manager of Manhattan Records. His collaborations include working with Queen, The Bee Gees, Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin, Bette Midler, Laura Branigan, Chaka Khan, Scritti Politti, Phil Collins, Daniel Rodriguez, Norah Jones, Richard Marx, Culture Club and Jewel. Mardin was awarded 11 Grammy Awards.

    Contents

    • 1 Biography
      • 1.1 Early life
      • 1.2 Career
    • 2 Personal life
    • 3 Awards
    • 4 References

    Biography

    Early life

    Arif Mardin was born in Istanbul into a renowned family that included statesmen, diplomats and leaders in the civic, military and business sectors of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. His father was co-owner in a petroleum gas station chain.

    Mardin grew up listening to the likes of Bing Crosby and Glenn Miller. Through his sister he met jazz critic Cuneyt Sermet, who turned him onto this music and eventually became his mentor. After graduating from Istanbul University in Economics and Commerce, Mardin studied at the London School of Economics. Influenced by his sister’s music records and jazz, he was also an accomplished orchestrator and arranger, but he never intended to pursue a career in music. However, he made two solo albums: Glass Onion, in 1970, and Journey, in 1975. In Journey, he was the composer and arranger, but he also played electric piano and percussion, and was accompanied by many stars of jazz (Randy and Michael Brecker, Joe Farrell, Gary Burton, Ron Carter, Steve Gadd, Billy Cobham and many others).[1]

    However, his fate changed in 1956 after meeting the American jazz musicians Dizzy Gillespie and Quincy Jones at a concert in Istanbul. He sent three demo compositions to his friend Tahir Sur who worked at a radio station in America. Sur took these compositions to Quincy Jones and Mardin became the first recipient of the Quincy Jones Scholarship at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. In 1958 he and his fiancé Latife moved from Istanbul to Boston. After graduating in 1961, he taught at Berklee for one year and then moved to New York City to try his luck. Arif Mardin was later made a trustee of Berklee and was awarded an honorary doctorate.

    Career

    Mardin began his career at Atlantic Records in 1963 as an assistant to Nesuhi Ertegün. A fellow Turkish émigré, Nesuhi was the brother of Ahmet Ertegün, Atlantic’s co-founder and a jazz enthusiast when they met at the Newport Jazz Festival. Mardin rose through the ranks quickly, becoming studio manager, label house producer and arranger. In 1969, he became the Vice President and later served as Senior Vice President until 2001. He worked closely on many projects with co-founders Ertegün and Jerry Wexler, as well as noted recording engineer Tom Dowd; the three legends (Dowd, Mardin, and Wexler) were responsible for establishing the “Atlantic Sound”. Arif Mardin retired from Atlantic Records in May 2001 and re-activated his label Manhattan Records. He maintained ties to the Turkish music industry.

    He produced countless hit artists including Margie Joseph, The Rascals, Carly Simon, Petula Clark, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, the Bee Gees, Diana Ross, Queen, Patti Labelle, Aretha Franklin, Lulu, Anita Baker, Judy Collins, Phil Collins, Scritti Politti, Culture Club, Roberta Flack, Average White Band, Hall & Oates, Donny Hathaway, Norah Jones, Daniel Rodriguez, Chaka Khan, George Benson, Melissa Manchester, Side Show, The Manhattan Transfer, Modern Jazz Quartet, Willie Nelson, John Prine, Leo Sayer, Dusty Springfield, David Bowie, Jewel and Ringo Starr.

    Mardin, when producing the Bee Gees’ 1975 Main Course album track “Nights on Broadway” famously discovered the distinctive falsetto of Barry Gibb, which became a familiar trademark of the band throughout the disco era.

    In his career of more than 40 years, he collected over 40 gold and platinum albums, over 15 Grammy nominations and 12 Grammy Awards. In 1990, Arif Mardin was inducted into the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame.

    Personal life

    Mardin died at his home in New York on June 25, 2006 following a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer. His remains were brought to Turkey and were interred at Karacaahmet Cemetery in Üsküdar district of Istanbul on July 5, 2006. Bee Gees’ soloist Robin Gibb and his wife Dwina attended also the funeral service among other prominent people.[2]

    Arif’s widow Latife is a playwright. Their son Yusuf “Joe” Muhittin (aka Joe Mardin), also a Berklee graduate, is a producer and arranger while their daughter Julie is an avant-garde artist-photographer. The other daughter, Nazan Joffre, works along with her brother. Joe Mardin created a documentary about his father called The Greatest Ears in Town: The Arif Mardin Story which was released on June 15, 2010. The documentary was directed by Doug Biro. It was premiered at several screenings at different chapters of The Recording Academy. The first screening took place in New York on June 15, 2010.

    Awards

    • Grammy Awards
      • Album of the Year 1979 (Saturday Night Fever soundtrack), 2003 (Come Away with Me)
      • Best Female Pop Vocal Performance 1982 (“You Should Hear How She Talks About You” – Melissa Manchester)
      • Best Album Notes 1993 (Queen of Soul: The Atlantic Recordings)
      • Best Jazz Vocal Album 2004 (A Little Moonlight)
      • Best Musical Show Album 1996 (Smokey Joe’s Cafe)
      • Best Pop Vocal Album 2003 (Come Away with Me)
      • Best Vocal Arrangement for Two or More Voices 1984 (“Be Bop Medley” with Chaka Khan)
      • Producer of the Year, Non-Classical 1976, 2003 (Come Away with Me)
      • Record of the Year 1990 (“Wind Beneath My Wings”), 2003 (“Don’t Know Why”)
      • Trustees Award 2002
    • Trustee Award for a Lifetime of Achievement in Music by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) 2001
    • “Man of the Year” by the Nordoff-Robbins Music Foundation 2001
    • Ertegün Impact Award

    References

    1. ^ See more
    2. ^ Yilmaz, Gözde; Gamze Tufekci (2006-07-06). “Mardin’in cenazesinde bir Bee Gees”. Hürriyet. Retrieved 2008-07-26.
  • Istanbul’s growth inspired career of new commissioner

    Istanbul’s growth inspired career of new commissioner

    By Dave Boyce

    Almanac Staff Writer

    8200 full

    Aydan Kutay brings an usual background to the Woodside Planning Commission, where she is the newest member. She grew up in Istanbul, and has a degree in urban planning from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara.

    Urban planning was attractive as an undergraduate major, she says, because of major changes going on in her native country in the 1970s. Mechanized agriculture had driven rural migrants into squatter camps in and around the major Turkish cities, resulting in chaotic living conditions.

    Ms. Kutay remembers how the city of her birth reacted to the squatters and the pressures of modernity: “with concrete blocks of high rises, international hotel chains, offices (and) condominium developments,” she says in an email

    With no municipal codes and no general plan, Istanbul became a victim of uncontrolled development, she said.

    Woodside

    The Woodside Town Council appointed her to the Planning Commission in a unanimous vote Feb. 28. The commission advises the council on zoning issues and approves conditional use permits and variances.

    Ms. Kutay lives on Hardwick Road in the Woodside Hills neighborhood with her two dogs, a German shepherd and a mixed breed; her two children are in graduate school and college, respectively, she said in an interview.

    After she came to the United States in 1982, she obtained a master’s degree in public policy and a doctorate in economics and public policy analysis, both from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

    As an economist and professor of economics and public policy, she has had teaching positions at Carnegie Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Southern California, according to the application she submitted for the commission seat. She came to California in 1992.

    Ms. Kutay, 49, told the council that she taught as an adjunct professor at Stanford University, and that she is currently a consulting analyst with the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco.

    A long-distance runner, she said she has run three half-marathons in San Francisco and plans to run the full city marathon in July.

    Among the civic-minded activities on her application are concerns for animals, the homeless and promotion of the fine arts.

    In an email, she said she founded the ACE Project, a San Francisco-based nonprofit with a goal of “collecting and disseminating research information on integrating new technologies to the economic system” to promote economic growth not based on consumption, to educate the public about climate change, and to create electronic global communities with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

    Her reasons for serving on the Planning Commission? “To be able to do civic service for Woodside and have a role in the future development of the town,” she wrote. “I find it very exciting and fulfilling to be able to interact with the residents of the town and with community leaders.”

    Protecting Woodside’s rural character will be a priority, she told the council. That character prompted her to move to Woodside after six years in Menlo Park, where she had been a board member for a planned unit development, she wrote.

    Her house is a work of sustainability in progress. While it now has lawns in front and back, she said she plans to dig up the grass and plant native drought-tolerant plants.

    She also intends to apply for recognition of her property as a Backyard Habitat, a town initiative that recognizes properties welcoming to native animals and plants. “I want to set an example for the neighborhood,” she said.

    Her own take

    Asked if she had ever built a house from scratch, Ms. Kutay said she had not but that remodeling her 4,000-square-foot home did require a site development permit, indicating a major undertaking with Town Hall.

    The outlook was grim, she said her neighbors told her. “Woodside is a very hard town to remodel and build in and I would have a lot of trouble trying to build what I want,” Ms. Kutay said she was told. “Actually it was a very positive and learning process that I went through,” she said. “A lot of people don’t see it that way. They see it as interference.”

    Regulation is a dirty word in some circles. Asked about what makes a good regulation, Ms. Kutay replied: “Regulations are there so that we protect our environment, we don’t destroy our environment, we don’t build these eyesores on properties. In the short term, it may look like a pain in the neck, but in the long term, regulations are good. Public rights are just as important” as private rights, she said.

    Ms. Kutay said she feels fortunate to be joining the Planning Commission at the same time that the town updated its general plan to include sustainable development as a priority.

    via Almanac Online : Istanbul’s growth inspired career of new commissioner.