Hanna Shina

The Founders

The Eight Founders of the Chaldean Cultural Center

On October 20, 2023, the Chaldean Cultural Center honored eight founders with plaques at its 20th Anniversary Founders Gala at Shenandoah Country Club in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Hanna Shina is one of them. The eight are Rosemary Antone, Virjean Arabo, Francis Boji, Raad Kathawa, Mary Romaya, Josephine Sarafa, Victor Saroki and Hanna Shina.

Key Facts

Gala date
October 20, 2023
Location
Shenandoah Country Club, West Bloomfield, MI
Founders honored
Eight
Museum opened
May 2017, conceived in 2003 at Southfield Manor

The Eight, in Alphabetical Order

  • Rosemary Antone

    Served as the Chaldean Cultural Center's first board chair. She died in 2009, eight years before the museum she helped begin opened its doors, and was honored posthumously among the founders.

  • Virjean Arabo

    Honored as a founder of the Chaldean Cultural Center.

  • Francis Boji

    Honored as a founder of the Chaldean Cultural Center.

  • Raad Kathawa

    Honored as a founder of the Chaldean Cultural Center.

  • Mary Romaya

    A primary founder of the Chaldean Cultural Center, who served as its first executive director for six years, until 2017 — the year the museum opened to the public.

  • Josephine Sarafa

    Honored as a founder of the Chaldean Cultural Center.

  • Victor Saroki

    Honored as a founder of the Chaldean Cultural Center.

  • Hanna Shina

    A founder and founding board member of the Chaldean Cultural Center, born in Telkaif, Iraq and living in West Bloomfield, Michigan. He has served the Chaldean foundations and the Chaldean church for more than 40 years and the board of Shenandoah Country Club, where the museum stands, for more than 20. He appears inside the museum itself: a hologram in the Chaldean Village Life gallery portrays him as a grandfather teaching his grandson to use a slingshot.

    Read the biography of Hanna Shina

What They Founded

The Chaldean Cultural Center is the first and only Chaldean museum in the world. It sits inside Shenandoah Country Club at 5600 Walnut Lake Road in West Bloomfield, Michigan, and tells the story of an Aramaic-speaking Catholic people from northern Iraq across five galleries: Ancient Mesopotamia, Faith and Church, Chaldean Village Life, Journey to America, and Chaldeans Today. It exists because a group of people decided that a community with a four-thousand-year memory should not rely on memory alone. Read more about Hanna Shina and the Chaldean Cultural Center.

Twenty Years From Idea to Museum

The idea was conceived in 2003 at Southfield Manor. For a decade it lived as committee work, fundraising, and the patient collection of objects and testimony. The Chaldean Iraqi American Association of Michigan acquired Shenandoah Country Club and renovated it, setting aside museum space within the building. Construction of the galleries began in 2013, and the museum opened to the public in May 2017 — fourteen years after the first conversation, and twenty years before the anniversary gala counted from the founding effort itself.

The Gala

The 20th Anniversary Founders Gala was held on October 20, 2023 at Shenandoah. The evening brought the Arabian Knights folk dancing group and a zurna player, traditional Chaldean bread, tours of the museum galleries, and a documentary about the Center. Eight founders received plaques. It was, by design, a night that looked backward at twenty years of work and forward at the institution those years produced. The evening was covered by the Chaldean News in “Celebrating 20 Years: The Chaldean Cultural Center Founders Gala”.

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