WASHINGTON — Paul Robert Ignatius, an Armenian-American icon, died on November 6, at age 104.
Ignatius was born in Glendale, California, on November 11, 1920. His maternal grandfather, Avedis Jamgochian, a native of Agn (Egin) in the Kharpert region and an early graduate of Euphrates (Yeprad) College in Kharpert, settled in Glendale in 1911, and was thus one of the first Armenians to live there. His parents, Hovsep Ignatius, a rug salesman also from Kharpert, and Elisa Jamgochian, a pianist, married in 1919.
Ignatius was a 1938 graduate of Hoover High School in Glendale, then attended and graduated from the University of Southern California. During World War II he served as a naval officer. He was assigned to the aircraft carrier Manila Bay and was on the carrier when it was attacked in the Philippines by Japanese air and naval forces as part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf. After the war, he earned an MBA from Harvard University.
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During his school years, he served as high school class president, acted in plays, and through his parents’ friendship with famed director Rouben Mamoulian, made appearances in the films “Becky Sharp” (1935) and “High, Wide and Handsome” (1937). Ignatius also worked for a summer at Warner Brothers after graduating from high school and later worked for film producer Louis de Rochemont, contributing to the 1951 film “The Whistle at Eaton Falls.” However, Ignatius’s life’s work would lie elsewhere; as he wrote, “As time went on, I became interested in national affairs and the opportunity for public service, and my life developed along those lines.”
In the 1950s, Ignatius founded Harbridge House, Inc., a management consulting and research firm based in Boston. In the 1960s, he would go on to serve for eight years in the presidential administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Paul Ignatius joined the Defense Department as assistant secretary of the Army for logistics in 1961, during the Kennedy administration, at a time when the United States had become increasingly embroiled in the Vietnam War. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, the former Ford Motor Company president who had recruited Ignatius as one of his “whiz kids” from the world of business and analytics, called him “one of my most valued and trusted associates.”
Starting in 1964, Ignatius spent five years as assistant secretary of defense, continuing to focus on supply chains and preparing ports and bases from which to stage the war in Southeast Asia.
“At home, there was tension in the family as my children and my wife all thought the war was a bad idea,” he said in a 2017 interview with AGBU, an English-language magazine published by the nonprofit Armenian General Benevolent Union. “They thought the policy of the United States at the time was wrong, and, while I disagreed, I am proud that my children were thinking for themselves. I had colleagues whose family relationships suffered, but we survived it.”
Left to right: David Ignatius, Amy Ignatius, Nancy Ignatius, Sarah Ignatius, Paul Ignatius, Adi Ignatius, and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, on the day Ignatius was sworn in as Secretary of the Navy (from Now I Know in Part, 2nd ed.)
He was tapped as secretary of the Navy in 1967 after the secretary-designee, John T. McNaughton, died in a plane crash. Ignatius’s two-year tenure coincided with the North Korean seizure of the Pueblo, a Navy intelligence ship, in January 1968 in what were thought to be North Korean waters.
One of the Pueblo’s 83 crew members was killed, and the others were released after being held for several months in a North Korean prison. The incident led to a Navy court of inquiry over the actions of five officers; it recommended two courts-martial, two letters of reprimand and a letter of admonition. Ignatius’s successor, John H. Chafee, who was later a Republican senator from Rhode Island, ultimately ended the proceedings and blocked the courts-martial, saying the months of captivity were sufficient punishment.
Following Ignatius’ government service, he was president of the Washington Post for two years and executive vice president of the Washington Post Company at a contentious time surrounding the release of the Pentagon Papers. Ignatius was named to his executive roles at the Post on the recommendation of McNamara, a close friend of the publisher, Katharine Graham.
He also was president of the Air Transport Association for fifteen years.
Ignatius was the recipient of the Army Distinguished Civilian Service Award, the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award, and the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Award. In 2010, the US Navy announced that a future Navy destroyer would bear the name USS Paul Ignatius, and in 2017 Ignatius and his family were present for the christening of the ship by his wife, the late Nancy Ignatius, and in 2019 for the commissioning ceremony of the destroyer.
His son David Ignatius, the international affairs columnist for the Washington Post and a novelist, confirmed the death.
Paul Ignatius married Nancy Weiser in 1947. In Washington, Ignatius joined and his wife in serving on the boards of charitable organizations and was chairman of the St. Albans School of Public Service, which encouraged young people to consider careers in government. He was a trustee of the George C. Marshall Foundation, a library and research institute in Lexington, Va.
Ignatius was no less active in retirement than in his working years. His seemingly inexhaustible mental and physical energy served him well as a tennis player, traveler, and writer. In 2006, Ignatius, along with his daughter Sarah and son Adi, was among a group of National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) travelers led by the late Prof. George Bournoutian who ventured to historic Western Armenia (Eastern Turkey) and the Republic of Armenia, including a return to the Kharpert region from which the Jamgochian and Ignatius families had emigrated over a century earlier. His account of this trip is a centerpiece of the 2nd edition of Now I Know in Part (NAASR Armenian Heritage Press, 2011).
He also authored the memoir On Board: My Life in the Navy, Government, and Business (Naval Institute Press, 2006) and 5 x 3: Fifteen Books by Three Great Armenian Writers (NAASR Armenian Heritage Press, 2013), which discusses works by William Saroyan, Michael Arlen and Leon Surmelian; and two characteristically witty, insightful, and far-ranging collections of essays, Coping With Covid: Reflections from a Long Life (2020), and Still Coping with Covid (2022).
Ignatius was predeceased by his wife Nancy (1925-2019). He is survived by his children, David, international affairs columnist for the Washington Post; Amy, New Hampshire superior court judge; Sarah, former executive director of the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research; and Adi, an editor at large of the Harvard Business Review; and by nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Adi, Paul, and Sarah Ignatius, Yerevan 2006 (from Now I Know in Part, 2nd ed.)
Ignatius was a long-time member of NAASR and among the earliest to join NAASR’s Leadership Circle in 2013. His close association with NAASR deepened when his daughter Sarah became NAASR’s Executive Director in 2016.
(Materials from the New York Times and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research were used to compile this report.)
