Nayer Joon

This news clipping from 1968 Turlock Journal (click on the previous link) gives you a brief taste of our life when my mother, Nayereh Azam Mahjoubi, arrived in the U.S. back in 1968.


She began studying biology first and later graduated from the chemistry department at Stanislaus State College, SSC. Today SSC is known as California State University, Stanislaus. She arrived in Turlock, a small town half way between San Francisco and Fresno, along with my younger brother and sister, Faramak and Faranak. Soon the word got around that there is a foreign family in town in which all members of the family were students. That led to the interview published in the paper.

We called my mother Nayer Joon. Joon in Farsi is the equivalent of dear in English, a term of endearment. To her five grandchildren she was known as Joony. We will miss her.

Nayer Joon and Pedar, my father

Nayer Joon, standing with her mother Zinat