Fifteen months after his harrowing escape from Ukraine in the early days of Russia’s invasion of his home country, Ivan Dmytriiev of the class of 2023 at DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville, Maryland stepped forward to receive a top award for graduating seniors following the school’s May 31 Baccalaureate Mass.
His fellow seniors, their parents and other family members, and DeMatha’s faculty and staff at the school’s Lt. (SEAL) Brendan Looney ’99 Convocation Center applauded loudly after it was announced that Ivan was selected to receive the DeMatha Parents Organization Award, presented to a senior who has displayed outstanding motivation, work habits and character. This award is in honor of the fathers and mothers of DeMatha High School students.
After fleeing from Ukraine with his younger brother and moving to Lanham, Maryland, to live with their grandparents, Ivan had entered DeMatha as a junior in the spring of 2022, taking on a full courseload of classes and immediately joining the Advanced Percussion Ensemble.
“He threw himself into life at DeMatha with incredible energy and enthusiasm. I think that’s amazing,” said Daniel McMahon, DeMatha’s principal, in an interview before the Mass.
That afternoon, Ivan said his upcoming June 2 graduation from DeMatha felt like a dream, but he conceded that his school year had its share of challenges.
“As I’m a senior, I had to concentrate on getting good grades. At the beginning it was kind of hard to combine thoughts about Ukraine and your family, and how safe they are, and thoughts about your physics exam,” Ivan said. “Usually in the morning, I would not look at my phone and read the news. At the end of school, I would check the news and see how everything was going.”
He noted that he still keeps in touch with his school friends from Ukraine, who are now in college since in the educational system there, students graduate from high school after the 11th grade. Since many of Russia’s rocket attacks are launched at night, he checks in with them to see that they are okay.
The DeMatha graduating senior, who is now 18, said he regularly talks with his family back home in Ukraine, and so far they are okay.
Before Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, he had been living in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, with his mother Anna, and with his younger brother Mykhailo, who was then six. His older brother Alex has just finished his master’s degree two weeks before the war started. Their parents are divorced, and their father Sergey lives in a village south of the capital, where he has a business.
On the day of the invasion, Ivan’s father came to Kyiv and took him and his younger brother to his village for safety. The next day, they decided to drive to the border with Poland, about 630 kilometers away. About 100 kilometers from the border, traffic stopped. After sleeping the night in the car, and realizing they didn’t have enough gas or food to wait there, they started walking when they were about 20 kilometers from the border.
Along the way, volunteers offered help to the fleeing refugees. Carrying his backpack with a few T-shirts and pairs of pants and some food, Ivan sometimes took turns with his father as they carried Mykhailo on their shoulders, but the young boy mostly walked beside them.
At midnight on Feb. 27, Ivan crossed the border into Poland with his little brother. As their father left them there, he told them, “Everything will be fine, and I will handle it.’”
The next day, the boys’ grandmother arrived in Poland to be with them and help them get to the United States. She had found people in Poland to help give the boys shelter and assistance. On March 10 last year, the boys and their grandmother arrived at Dulles International Airport in the Washington area.
Their grandparents – Olga D. Carlson and Ronald Carlson – then helped the boys find schools to attend in Maryland. While Ivan began attending classes at DeMatha, Mykhailo was enrolled at Catherine T. Reed Elementary School in Lanham, where he is now a first grader.
Ivan’s mother works as a nurse in Kyiv and also does accounting. His older brother Alex while working there hopes to someday earn his doctorate degree. Their father Sergey continues to run his business and has helped people impacted by the war, Ivan said.
“As the war started, a lot of people needed shelter. He (our father) volunteered, giving people a place to stay for free. He understood people need to unite and help each other,” Ivan said.
When he came to DeMatha last spring, Ivan said his fellow students and the school’s teachers immediately welcomed him and made him feel part of the community and brotherhood there.
In Ukraine, he had attended music school, and before the war started he had visited his grandparents in the summertime and attended music camps in Maryland and Pennsylvania. “I love music,” he said, adding that it has been part of his life since childhood.
Since he played the drums and xylophone, he felt right at home joining the Advanced Percussion Ensemble in DeMatha’s well-known music program, and within weeks of arriving there, he joined his fellow student musicians in performing at a concert and got a big ovation when he was introduced.
This school year, Ivan joined DeMatha’s Advanced Percussion Ensemble on a music trip to Myrtle Beach, where their group and the schools’ orchestra and Wind Ensemble earned top awards. In concerts and competitions this year, Ivan has played various percussion instruments for the ensemble, including tom-tom drums, glockenspiel, timpani, marimba and a snare drum.
“It (music) helps me forget about everything and enjoy the moment of playing,” Ivan said, adding that “at (the) times you play with your friends and classmates, it’s even more meaningful. You know those guys, and together you make something beautiful.”
During his senior year at DeMatha, Ivan’s classes included physics, Advanced Placement composition and literature, pre-calculus, U.S. government, and classes on Catholic traditions and Catholic social teaching.
He joined classmates in volunteering in a three-day service trip to Camden, New Jersey, where they packed food boxes for people in need. Ivan said that trip underscored the importance of reaching out to others and “understanding we’re all people, and you shouldn’t judge someone because he’s different from you.”
The graduating senior said one key thing that he’ll take from his education at DeMatha is “the need to help others, the way they helped me.”
Ivan added that, “I really liked the teachers here and how they educate, and their desire to make us better.”
As his graduation from DeMatha Catholic High School approached, Ivan said, “I realize I’m one step closer to the greater me.”
This fall, he plans to attend Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and study computer science.
Asked about his dreams for the future, Ivan spoke not about himself, but about the people of Ukraine. “(I hope) that all people will have a happy life, and the war will end,” Ivan said. He added, “Most of my mind is still worried about what happening (there), and every day hearing about innocent people dying because rockets hit their house.” Then he asked, “How can you be happy when such evil things are happening in your home country?”
One day, he hopes to return home to Ukraine, to his family and friends. He’s not sure what profession that he will make his life’s work. “I’ve learned life is unpredictable,” he said.
In an interview last year, Ivan, who is a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, said he prays for his family back home and for a return to peace in that country. “At night before I go to bed, I thank God for everything he’s given me,” he said.
Ivan praised the bravery and strength of the Ukrainian people. After a century when the people of that country endured invasions, occupations, starvation and repression, Ukraine gained its independence in 1991.
“Throughout many years, the Ukrainian nation was oppressed, but the people really loved and believed in the freedom of Ukraine, and hold that spirit that still lives in our souls,” Ivan said during the interview just before his graduation from DeMatha Catholic High School.
When Ivan started attending DeMatha last spring, a large blue and yellow Ukrainian flag was displayed on the side of its main academic building, next to two banners noting the school’s “Faith-Filled Gentlemen and Scholars” and its hallmarks of faith, community service, academics, arts and athletics.
“It (the Ukrainian flag) was even there before I came,” Ivan said. “When I first saw it, it gave a smile on my face. It’s very meaningful to me.”
