11/12/2025
Armenian Film Foundation salutes Paul R. Ignatius who passed away on November 6, 2025, at the age of 104.
We remain grateful for his vision and support of the Armenian Film Foundation, among many other cultural organizations.
Mr Ignatius was a former U.S. Secretary of Navy & U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, a distinguished public servant, highly decorated Navy veteran, and cherished member of the Armenian American community. Our heartfelt condolences go to the Ignatius family. His enduring legacy will continue to guide and inspire generations to come.
Paul 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, also from Kharpert, and Elisa Jamgochian, 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.
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, Paul 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, first as an Assistant Secretary of the Army, then as Under Secretary of the Army and Assistant Secretary of Defense, and finally from 1967-69 as Secretary of the Navy. Following his government service, he was president of the Washington Post for two years and president of the Air Transport Association for fifteen years.
Paul 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.
He will be remembered by all who ever had the honor to meet him or to be inspired by his exemplary life. As Shakespeare wrote: “His life was gentle; and the elements so mixed in him, that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, this was a man!”
