A former Washoe County School District bus driver, history teacher and assistant principal living in Ukraine says he “saw the signs” and decided to flee the country only weeks before the Russian invasion.
2 News interviewed Brett Mason and his wife Natalia Drab from Marsa Alam, Egypt, where they are waiting for the war to end.
“It is certainly something that I thought would not happen to me,” said Mason.
Mason and Drab spoke to us from a hotel room in Egypt, unable to go their home Kyiv as Russia forces target the city. Drab was born and raised in Ukraine.
“It’s very beautiful,” Drab remembers. “We have very beautiful buildings, modern ones, and old ones. There is a lot of ancient history and it’s one of the oldest cities in Europe.”
That history is what made this former Wooster High School history teacher and assistant principal move there. Mason and Drab married in spring 2020, and he has made a life for himself since.
“Bars, restaurants, plenty of parks to walk, it’s really a wonderful place to live,” he said.
Mason, however, could not help but notice the clues of change in January as Russian President Putin staged hundreds of thousands of troops at the border.
“Being a history teacher, I paid attention and I saw what I thought were a lot of the signs of bad things to come,” he said.
Drab thought not so fast. Despite the precariousness of their plight, the two joke together, remembering how they disagreed on whether to leave only a few weeks ago.
“They were making fun of him,” said Drab. “They were saying, ‘You are crazy. You are not serious.' These Americans are afraid of everything. They were just making fun of him, including me.”
Because they left at the end of January and because they left earlier, their escape was far less dramatic from the stories we hear today. They left their dog with Natalia’s mom. Both are still in Zhytomyr Ukraine.
“We didn’t take everything with us, but we took quite a bit,” said Mason.
But as time goes on this time, the two pay as much attention as much as they can bare.
“Today was a beautiful day outside and we said we need to get out of the room, quit watching the stuff so much because you are up and down with every report,” said Mason.
Their goal of course is to return to Kyiv as soon as possible.
“We are just waiting for the time that we can go back home,” said Drab. “I want to come back home.”
Mason has three sons, two of which still live in Reno. If the situation gets worse, there is the possibility that the couple will come to Reno in spring. However, there is also a chance they will go to Greece to stay with Drab’s daughter.
