The Official Web Page
of
The William Saroyan Foundation

Established by William Saroyan December 30, 1966

Stanford University Libraries and the William Saroyan Foundation

Contacts for General Information

Links of Interest

The William Saroyan Foundation:
It’s History and Legacy

I have forgotten more than I can remember, and it is all there, somewhere. It has meaning and something more than meaning.
Let the good boys and girls of scholarship find out what.
William Saroyan –“Where The Bones Go"

Saroyan officially founded the William Saroyan Foundation on December 30, 1966.  The initial signatories to the Articles of Incorporation and subsequent officers and directors were William Saroyan, his bother Henry Saroyan and sister, Cosette Saroyan. Their first order of business was the following resolution:

“By unanimous vote, [the] Deed of Trust was accepted from William Saroyan of a manuscript of ‘The Time of Your Life’ and of sixteen short stories, to be made available for literary and educational use by the public.” 

Thus was the beginning of 4 decades of Foundation activities.

Through the years a number of knowledgeable citizens, now retired from the Board of Trustees, accepted appointments from the Board and contributed to its success: Leon S. Peters, business executive; Dickran Kouymjian, professor, Fresno State University; Dr. Harold Haak, president, California State University, Fresno; William Abrahams, author, executor of the Lillian Hellman Estate; James D. Hart, Executive Director, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; Robert Setrakian, past President and Chairman of the Foundation, and Executor of the William Saroyan Estate;  Daniel Dibert, attorney; Andrew Jameson, former Vice Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley;  and Anthony M. Frank, United States Postmaster General, Retired. The current Trustees: Haig Mardikian, President and CEO of the Foundation; Scott H. Setrakian, business executive.

The son of immigrants, Saroyan never lost touch with his proud Armenian heritage. He made that heritage and his literary genius an important part of the American fabric through his half century of writing.  His humor and his pathos permeated the international literary marketplace.  His career was highlighted by numerous accolades and awards following his explosive entry on the literary scene in 1934 with his first book of short stories published by Random House, The Daring Young Man On The Flying Trapeze and Other Stories.

Nine years after Mr. Saroyan’s death, his spinster sister, Cosette, died in the home jointly owned by her and Saroyan’s Foundation.  Saroyan’s Last Will and Testament bequeathed his entire estate and its contents to his Foundation. Some of his personal belongings and memorabilia were/are temporarily stored at the home.  Among them was the missing manuscript that he completed the year before his death. [It was recently published by The Press at California State University, Fresno: “Where The Bones Go.”]  He writes:

“Among my papers are manuscripts of unpublished stories, essays, autobiographical works, novels, plays, and thousands of carbon copies of letters, and all of this material very probably has a value, both in terms of materialistic terms and in terms of art, that I want it all to be at least organized and made accessible to the appropriate persons such as biographers, scholars, researchers [and] students…”

When he expressed his concern, Saroyan’s unique literary treasure was scattered hither and yon: Paris, San Francisco, Malibu, Berkeley, and several locations in Fresno, California. So it became the mandate of the Foundation trustees to eventually bring together the entire literary collection, in perpetuity, for organization, preservation, scholarly research, education, and commercial exploitation through publication. Since 1981, the Foundation has negotiated over 1000 permission grants and publications of Mr. Saroyan’s writings.  Included in this number are novels, short stories, plays, musicals, songs and opera, in book form as well as for production on stage, screen, radio and television, in the United States and in scores of foreign countries.

In early 1995, the Foundation trustees concluded that it was now time to consider bringing together all of the literary papers as Mr. Saroyan desired. They were still housed on loan at three separate depositories: The Fresno Metropolitan Museum, the Bancroft Library and the Foundation office.  Potential sites under consideration included three universities and a special site at the Presidio of San Francisco of the National Park Service. In December of the same year, the trustees, after long deliberation, directed the Foundation’s president to take all necessary steps to enter into an agreement awarding all of the Saroyan Papers to Leland Stanford Junior University.

During the sixteenth anniversary year of the death of William Saroyan, 1997, all of his literary papers were placed in Special Collections at Stanford University Libraries, now designated the William Saroyan Archive.  For the Foundation trustees it was a rewarding period. The year shall be remembered as the new and positive chapter in the fulfillment of many of the wishes and aspirations of one of the giants of American literature of that century.  Now, eleven years later, there continues to be a great deal of pleasure and gratitude for the Foundation trustees, with the full faith and confidence in Stanford’s ability, skill, competence and resources in setting a course that today is fulfilling the objectives and goals of William Saroyan.

Robert Setrakian
Chairman, Emeritus, William Saroyan Foundation
First Honorary Curator of the William Saroyan Archive, Stanford Univ.

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  01/18/2008