Brother making documentary on George Keverian

A towering presence at the State House, whose noted girth added to his reputation - at one point he was over 400 pounds - the Harvard-educated Everett native made his name as a policy wonk and helped trim the Legislature through two rounds of redistricting. In the 1970s, he worked to create the Office of Campaign and Political Finance and the State Ethics Commission. But perhaps his most significant accomplishment came in 1985, when he became the only representative to defeat a sitting House speaker.

Now, almost seven months after George Keverian’s death, Jack, 80, is on a mission to tell his story. An MIT-trained engineer and educator, Jack is making a film about his brother that he hopes will be shown in area schools and on cable TV. The idea came to him in March, when he returned to his childhood home on Nichols Street in Everett, where his brother lived most of his life. It was the day after George died, at age 77, and Jack needed his Army papers.

“It was pure happenstance that I stumbled across his valedictorian speech of 1949,’’ when he graduated from Everett High, said Jack. When he picked up the speech, he had a new insight into his younger brother. “He identified his strong belief in a democracy and also spoke about public service and how important it was to give to people without expecting anything in return. And that’s what he based his whole life on.’’

Jack traces much of that speech to the influence and guidance of their parents, Eliza and Nazar Keverian. Individually, they had fled from their native Turkey to avoid the systematic killing by Ottoman Turks before 1915. Nazar had come to America, and by 1924, had set up a shoe shop in Revere. In his search for a wife, he traveled to Alepo, Syria, that year, and agreed to an arranged marriage with Eliza. They settled in Everett, where Nazar took over a shoe shop and Eliza became a dressmaker.

“They struggled but never accepted charity,’’ said Jack.

At home, the boys spoke Armenian with their parents, but like other Depression-era kids they played kick-the-can and other games that didn’t cost money. “My parents used to say the most important thing is to have an education. [George] saw how hard my parents had to work and it influenced him to become a compassionate person,’’ said Jack.

When he began to inventory his brother’s possessions in the spring, Jack also came across more than 60 videotapes. He watched them all, and started thinking about what might fit into a documentary.

To date, he has a rough cut of 17 minutes that he’s aired on Everett Community Television and posted on YouTube.

Jack narrates the documentary, which includes clips of his brother through childhood, as a track star and valedictorian at Everett High School, through his years at the State House, and later at Everett City Hall, where he served as chairman of the Board of Assessors. The piece also includes speeches his brother made at the State House in the 1980s and during his unsuccessful run for state treasurer in 1990.

With mostly still photos in the documentary, Jack plans to expand it to 30 minutes by adding interviews with politicians and Everett friends who knew his brother well.

The piece is hardly objective, but that’s not the point, said Jack. He wants children, like those at the George Keverian School in Everett, to know how the son of working-class immigrants rose to attend an Ivy League school and make a difference in the Legislature.

To keep the piece under 30 minutes will be a challenge. There will be stories about how George helped a slew of constituents find work after they were laid off. There will be tales about his 1983 face-to-face meeting at Revere Beach with then-speaker Thomas McGee, the man he would oust from office in 1985. There will be tales, no doubt, of his oratorical and debating skills, his good-natured ribbing of former governor Michael Dukakis, and his regular poker games on the North Shore.

There also will be stories about his struggles to lose weight. In 1981, he lost 200 pounds only to put it all back on, and six years ago he underwent successful gastric bypass surgery.

When the DVD stopped, Jack Keverian continued to stare at the blank screen before clicking off the TV. “I miss him,’’ he said.

Steven Rosenberg can be reached at srosenberg@globe.com.