Leonard Chernigal turned 90 on March 16, and his life story mirrors the life of the Assyrian Orthodox Church of the Virgin Mary, founded in West Hoboken (now Union City) about 13 years before his birth in 1928. The West Hoboken church was the first Assyrian Orthodox Church of Antioch built in the United States, taking its name from the church in Diyarbakır, Turkey, that many West Hoboken parishioners attended before they left the old country. In fact, the altar in the West Hoboken church was designed to look like the altar......

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