Oral history interview with Elizabeth Partoyan, 2020

Biographical Note

Elizabeth Partoyan was born in 1971 in New York City, and she grew up in Northern Virginia. Her father was an attorney, a first-generation American of Armenian descent. Her mother was a teacher. After her parents divorced, Partoyan and her brother Gary moved in with father and stepmother. Partoyan graduated attended Northwestern University. Her mother had struggled with alcoholism and died during Partoyan's junior year of college. In 1993, Partoyan graduated with a degree in human development and social policy. She lived briefly in Seattle, Washington, and then returned to Northern Virginia to work in education policy. In 1999, she met Doug Benge through a mutual friend. When the met, Benge lived in Houston, Texas and was working in gas chromatography. He moved to Northern Virginia for the relationship and began working in real estate. They were married in 2003. In 2007, as Benge's alcoholism grew, they divorced. Benge's downward spiral was swift in the year after their divorce, and in 2008 he committed suicide at the age of forty-two. Following the Pulse Nightclub shooting, Partoyan decided to join the gun violence prevention (GVP) movement. In the early 2020s, Partoyan was working as an independent consultant for education reform and living in Alexandria, Virginia. Within the GVP movement, she was State Community Outreach Lead for the Virginia Chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and was a member of the Everytown for Gun Safety Survivor Network

Scope and Contents

Elizabeth Partoyan begins this life history interview with memories of her youth and family dynamics through her twenties. She analyzes the impacts of her mother's alcoholism on her personality and subsequent relationships. She describes her diagnosis and experiences with obsessive-compulsive disorder. She also considers in detail her relationships with her father, stepmother, and brother. The significant focus of the interview Partoyan's ex-husband Doug Benge, who committed suicide with a handgun in 2008. She gives a detailed description of their early relationship: Benge's life trajectory to that point; how they met; her respect for his intelligence and unique worldviews; his family; evident class and education differences; their decision to marry; and their ceremony at Lake Tahoe. She discusses the increasing challenges as a couple, therapy, Benge's increasing alcohol consumption between 2004-2006, impacts of his alcoholism on his work, and his financial issues. She describes the legal mechanics of their amicable divorce in 2007. Partoyan contrasts her family's opposition to guns and his family's traditions of having them for hunting and self-defense. She describes the friction between these worldviews. Benge kept a pistol in the nightstand for protection. She discusses their lives after the divorce and a troubled relationship of Benge's. She details the events of his suicide, receiving the news, and the effects of the suicide on people around Benge. She concludes with reflections on Benge's personality

Subjects

• Alcoholism.
• Gun control--United States.
• Interviews.
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Partoyan, Elizabeth--Interviews.
• Suicide.
• Werner-Thomas, Holly, interviewer.

Access Conditions

Copyright by Elizabeth Partoyan. The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York hold a non-exclusive license to enable library activities