YEREVAN, JUNE 27, ARMENPRESS. The Boston Globe has published an article about the Armenians of Boston and presented their traditions. “Armenpress” reports reporter of The Boston Glone visited an Armenian family in Nazaret and Lena Derkevorkian’s backyard in Lexington, where the tonir is located. The semi-subterranean wood oven, one of only a few in the area, looks like a brick missile silo in miniature, sending up a blast column of heat and smoke that greets visitors before its owners have a chance.

Nazo (as Nazaret is known) and Lena are hosting a dinner party for a dozen longtime friends, including well known members of Boston’s Armenian-American community like Carolyn Mugar, the activist and philanthropist whose father founded Star Market; Noubar Afeyan, the biotechnology entrepreneur and investor; and Anthony Barsamian, the first Armenian-American president of the Massachusetts Council of Churches.

The Derkevorkians have hosted barbecues for this group many times, so the flow of the night is well established. An hour before dinner and despite steady rain, the crowd is clustered near the tonir listening to Barsamian give community updates and recount his last Armenia trip. A collective bellow sounds when he unveils a bottle of Armenia’s famed Ararat brandy, silky at 20 years of age and reputedly a favorite of Winston Churchill’s.

“The tonir was the central gathering place in Armenian villages until electricity and natural gas spread in the Soviet era,” says Nazo, a physician who was born in Aleppo, Syria, and educated in Armenia, before immigrating to the United States in 1990. “Every time I use it, I think about how I wouldn’t have survived here without these friends.”