Early Life
Jirair S. Hovnanian was born in Kirkuk, Iraq. His parents, who were ethnic Armenians had fled to Iraq in 1915 to escape the Armenian Genocide. Jirair's father was from Sebastia and his mother was from Malatia. Hovnanian's father, Stepan K. Hovnanian, owned and operated a construction company based in Baghdad. Hovnanian was one of six children in his family. He attended a Jesuit high school in Kirkuk.
The Hovnanian family, including Jirair, immigrated to the United States in 1948. The family settled in North Philadelphia. Hovnanian spoke very little English when he arrived in the U.S.
Hovnanian married his wife, Elizabeth Vosbikian. Her family had created the Quickie Manufacturing Corporation, which manufactured popular products such as the Quickie broom and mops.
Hovnanian graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1952 with a bachelor's degree in business.
Read more about this topic: Jirair Hovnanian
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Whatever, in fact, is modern in our life we owe to the Greeks. Whatever is an anachronism is due to mediaevalism.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)