As musicians in the Advanced Percussion Ensemble of DeMatha Catholic High School gathered on stage for a recent concert at their Hyattsville, Maryland school, one of the performers – a new student there – didn’t have time to get a tux like the other student musicians were wearing, so he donned a DeMatha blazer and khakis.
Before performing their music, Dr. Michael Gatti, the chairman of DeMatha’s music department and the percussion instructor, introduced that student to the audience. He was Ivan Dmytriiev, 17, a Ukrainian refugee who had arrived in the United States with his 6-year-old little brother, Mykhailo, after a harrowing escape from his country just after Russia launched its invasion there. Ivan and his brother are living with their grandparents in Lanham, Olga D. Carlson and Ronald Carlson, and he started attending DeMatha in April.
In Ukraine, Ivan attended a music school and played the drums and xylophone. Before the DeMatha concert, he learned the piece of music that the ensemble would be performing, and he played the xylophone and cymbals in the performance.
“He got a huge ovation,” Dr. Gatti said, remembering the audience’s reaction after Ivan’s introduction and his performance. After Ivan played that piece as part of the Percussion Ensemble, Dr. Gatti walked over to him, congratulating him with a fist-bump.
Interviewed on May 19 at DeMatha, Ivan said that concert was a fun experience for him. “I was happy. My band was very nice.”
Sitting at a picnic table on a mild spring afternoon, the student wore a white DeMatha polo shirt and had a free period after taking a geometry test earlier that day. Nearby, displayed on the outside of DeMatha’s main building were two banners noting the school’s “Faith-Filled Gentlemen and Scholars” and its hallmarks of faith, community service, academics, arts and athletics. And displayed on the wall in between the banners was a large blue and yellow Ukrainian flag.
Speaking English in a calm voice, Ivan recounted his journey from Ukraine to Maryland.
He and his younger brother were living in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, with their mother Anna, who had been a nurse. His parents are divorced, and his father Sergey lives in a village south of the capital, where he has a business. His older brother Alex just finished his master’s degree two weeks before the war started.
On Feb. 24, 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. “People who understood the situation helped,” he said of the Ukrainians helping them. “…No matter what, they help each other. It really inspired me… and I want to do the same.”
Carrying his backpack, Ivan said he just had “a couple of T-shirts, pants and some food.” Sometimes he and his father carried Mykhailo on their shoulders, but he mostly walked beside them.
“My little brother is a real hero. I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking about,” Ivan said. “I kept telling him, ‘There’s a little bit left, and we’ll be fine. We’ll go to bed and have a nice sleep.’ He didn’t even cry. He was brave.”
At midnight on Feb. 27, Ivan crossed the border into Poland with his little brother.
When asked what his father said to the boys as he left them there, Ivan answered, “He said, ‘Everything will be fine, and I will handle it.’” As he repeated his father’s words, it was the only time in the interview when Ivan’s voice broke slightly with emotion.
The next day, the boys’ grandmother arrived in Poland to be with them and help them get to the United States. “My grandmother immediately came to Poland… We were all so lucky. She found people who gave us shelter and everything we needed,” Ivan said.
He noted that his grandmother in Maryland had been watching the news about Ukraine, and she and his grandfather decided to do whatever they could to help the boys, and she initially found friends of friends to give them a place to stay in Poland.
“She’s my grandmother, and I really love her,” Ivan said. “I know she always loved me and was willing to help no matter what. She’s the kind of person who thinks of others if they have some kind of problem.”
The boys stayed in Poland about a week, as Ivan’s passport was updated, and on March 10, the boys and their grandmother arrived at Dulles International Airport in the Washington area.
Since then, Ivan said he has been talking with his family members back in Ukraine every two to three days, usually with a video chat.
“Right now, everything seems quiet. They’re in a safe place,” he said.
His mother has been assisting fellow nurses and volunteering at hospitals there. His father opened up one of his houses for refugees to stay in and has been helping people in his village. And he said his older brother has also been volunteering, bringing food to elderly residents and participating in a neighborhood watch.
At the time of his interview, Ivan said he had been attending DeMatha for about three or four weeks and was in his junior year there, taking classes in algebra, geometry, Advanced Placement language, Christian ethics and an engineering course involving 3-D modeling. Mykhailo has been attending Catherine T. Reed Elementary School in Lanham.
“I’m really happy being here (at DeMatha),” Ivan said. “The teachers, they’re very good and kind. They are people who want to talk, and teachers I want to learn from. They have an aura that makes me happy and (inspires me to) want to stay here more.”
Ivan added, “When I came here, in a couple of days, I already had a lot of friends… I’m really happy I met them. They helped me emotionally to stay and be more optimistic.”
The teen, who is a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, said, “When everything was happening in Ukraine on the 24th of February I was actually praying and asking that everything would be fine.”
Now he continues to pray for the safety of his family back home in Ukraine and to hope for a return to peace in that country.
“At night before I go to bed, I thank God for everything he’s given me, for giving me the opportunity to leave and be in another country. I’m thankful I’m here in a safe place,” he said.
The Ukrainian youth added that “being here and watching the news is hard… It’s hard to think about studying and everything else because of the bad things happening there.”
He noted how for hundreds of years, other countries, and now Russia, have tried to destroy Ukraine. After a century when the people of that country endured invasions, occupations, starvation and repression, Ukraine gained its independence in 1991.
“Through those years, the Ukrainian people became stronger and braver. They won’t surrender, and (they will) keep fighting to the end,” Ivan said. “Our culture and language is part of us.”
Freedom “is very important, because that’s what our great-grandparents tried to have. Now that we have it, we want to defend it,” he said.
As for the future, he hopes that the war will end, and Ukraine will remain free, and he will return to his country and have “children there, and make sure when they grow up, nothing will happen to them that happened to me.”
He dreams of possibly becoming an actor some day, and bringing happiness to people and making them smile. The teen expressed admiration for Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, a former actor and comedian. “I really love him,” he said. “A lot of people were thinking he would leave and wouldn’t handle it. As we can see, he showed his bravery and showed that the Ukrainian people will never surrender, and (they will) finish what they started.”
Reflecting on his experience at DeMatha Catholic High School, Ivan said, “Right now, I can actually say coming here makes me feel free… I have an opportunity to become better, with the students and the teachers I have here.”
Interviewed later in his music office, Dr. Gatti remembered how Ivan had joined DeMatha’s Advanced Percussion Ensemble, and how the “guys took him immediately in as one of their own, the first day he showed up.”
After handing Ivan sheet music for the piece that the ensemble would be performing in the concert, “he took it home and learned it on his own. He learned the thing, and he perfected it,” the teacher said.
Dr. Gatti said Ivan is an inspiring young man, “to make it halfway around the world, and he is here with a smile on his face, and happy to be here.”
The music department chairman praised DeMatha for its welcoming, accepting spirit. The attitude there, he said, is, “You’re not a foreigner or stranger here.”
And describing his department, Dr. Gatti said, “If you want to make music, come on in.”
