ON THE TOWN: Evan Gershkovich, on left, Michael Van Itallie, in foreground, and friends enjoyed a day visiting the High Line in New York City in 2012, just two years after graduating from Princeton High School. (Photo courtesy of Michael Van Itallie)

By Donald Gilpin

Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was brought up in Princeton and graduated from Princeton High School (PHS) in 2010, returned to the U.S. late last Thursday night, freed in a 24-person prisoner swap after 16 months in a Russian prison.

Michael Van Itallie, who also grew up in Princeton and has been a best friend of Gershkovich since they first met when they were 8 years old playing Princeton Youth Soccer, described watching the rapid sequence of events unfold last Thursday.

“I felt relief and joy,” said Van Itallie. “I was so happy for him and his family. It was incredible. Something that we had looked for for so long, but we had hardened ourselves to the reality that it might not come for a long time.”

Van Itallie, 32, who now lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., and works as a city administrator, watched the television coverage on Thursday and celebrated with friends. ““That night was amazing,” he said, “seeing reports about the plane and the exchange on the tarmac in Turkey, and then tracking his flight home and seeing pictures of him aboard the flight. When the flight landed [at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland] and he walked off and greeted Kamala and Biden and embraced his family — that was incredible. I’ll never forget that. The culmination of everything was so emotional.”

Meanwhile in Princeton, the joy was no less heartfelt. “We are relieved and delighted by the news that Evan Gershkovich has been released from a Russian prison as part of a prisoner exchange with the United States and other countries,” said Princeton Public Schools (PPS) Acting Superintendent Kathie Foster.

The PHS boys’ soccer team, of which Gershkovich was the co-captain 15 years ago, along with PHS teacher and soccer coach Wayne Sutcliffe and PHS graduates from 2010, have been working to support Gershkovich’s family in their efforts to secure their son’s release.

The team had organized an Evan Gershkovich Awareness Luncheon for August 25 at Conte’s Pizza and Bar on Witherspoon Street. “We are thrilled to be able to change this event to a celebration of Evan’s return,” said Sutcliffe, as quoted in a PPS press release.

A banner has also been on display in the PHS boys’ locker room urging Gershkovich’s release, and members of the boys’ soccer team have been wearing shirts stating: “I Stand With Evan.”

Sutcliffe, as quoted in USA Today, described watching news reports about Gershkovich on TV over the past 16 months. “Every time I saw him on TV in that cage when he would, like, in a cheeky way, smile, it was like looking at him when we had a huge game, and the pressure was at its greatest,” said Sutcliffe. “Evan’s a guy that you can count on, rely on. He never failed the coaching staff and every guy on the team.”

Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman was also quick to salute Gershkovich’s release with a statement praising him and condemning the Russian government’s arrest, imprisonment, and false conviction.

“It is wonderful to see the release of journalist and Princeton native Evan Gershkovich, along with several other American citizens wrongfully detained overseas,” she said. “I join all of America in welcoming Evan home after a grueling 16 months of unjustified imprisonment in Russia. A graduate of Princeton High School, Evan is a beloved former resident of New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District and we are so relieved he is safely on his way home.”

In a phone conversation on Monday, Van Itallie recalled a number of highlights in his almost quarter-century friendship with Gershkovich. On their Youth Soccer team, Gershkovich’s father was the coach —“very charming and a great coach” — and Evan already stood out for his prowess and his love of the game.

At PHS, as Van Itallie described, Gershkovich became known as a great writer and “he very quickly fit in with my group of friends that I had known for a long time.” Van Itallie continued, “Some of my best high school memories involve Evan. He’s very gregarious, very outgoing. He sort of took the high school by storm in a very charming way. Everyone got along with him and liked him. He’s fun to be around.”

In addition to leading the soccer team and excelling academically, Gershkovich also wrote for The Tower school newspaper. “Looking back, it seems obvious that he would become a journalist,” Van Itallie said.

Coincidentally, both young men ended up going to Bowdoin College in Maine after their 2010 PHS graduation, and they saw each other frequently over the next four years.

“One of the things we always had in common was an adventurous side,” said Van Itallie. On one bicycle trip from Princeton they rode to the Jersey Shore and back, 100 miles in the same day, and on another three-night excursion they rode their bikes to the shore, then traveled by ferry to Manhattan, then rode out to the end of Long Island and over to Connecticut on another ferry, about 180 miles in total.

“Adolescent adventure,” said Van Itallie, “testing our limits. I felt I could always count on him to do those kinds of somewhat outlandish adventures.”

At one point during their college years they were both traveling in South America and linked up at various points on the route, traveling for two or three weeks together in Chile and Argentina.

“He really loves traveling,” said Van Itallie. “He has an incredible ability to connect with people and to make friends. That’s what helps to make him an incredible reporter. He loves people in a very genuinely interested way. I think that’s what he loves so much about travel. He gets to learn about people, their experiences, and what makes them tick.”

He continued, “That makes him so much fun. He enhances his fellow travelers’ experience by being able to connect with people along the way. The times I spent with him were some of my most memorable.”

After their graduation from Bowdoin, Gershkovich and Van Itallie and another Bowdoin graduate shared a Brooklyn apartment for almost two years, before Gershkovich got a job with the Moscow Times in 2018 and decided to move to Russia. His parents had grown up in Russia and he spoke Russian fluently.

“It was a great choice for him,” said Van Itallie. “He loved it immediately. He loved reporting and he also loved life in Moscow. He had a sense of coming home because he’d grown up in Russian culture from his parents. He was doing great work and he loved his work, and then he landed the job with the Wall Street Journal, which was sort of a dream job. He was incredibly excited about it.”

When the war broke out in Ukraine, Gershkovich had to leave Russia, and he moved to London, but returned frequently to Russia on reporting trips that were often dangerous. He and Van Itallie kept in touch through texts and group texts with friends, and they met in New York at least once or twice a year on Gershkovich’s visits to the U.S. “Every time he came home I’d see him in New York,” said Van Itallie. “We’d get friends together and that was always a blast.”

During the past 16 months, of course, since Gershkovich’s arrest, their relationship changed dramatically. “It was an overwhelming feeling of shock and concern, realizing that your friend had become a front-page international story with his fate tied up in the highest levels of U.S., Russian, and international super powers.”

Van Itallie and his friends were quickly in touch with Gershkovich’s family to find out how they could help. Through Gershkovich’s international reporting friends, they were able to figure out how to send Gershkovich care packages, clothes, and whatever else they were allowed to send to him, and they established a process for sending letters and emails, that had to be translated into Russian, that would get to him in prison through the screening process.

Van Itallie described how the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones quickly organized legal support in Russia and lobbying support in Washington. “They did an incredible job,” he said. “They rose to the occasion and marshaled their resources in an effective way, and eventually were successful.”

Van Itallie noted how, despite everyone’s concerns and worries, Gershkovich appeared to be doing “remarkably well.”

“The through-line was his sense of humor,” Van Itallie said. “When I exchanged letters with him, for the most part we were joking around and talking about our lives and things we’re interested in and people we know in a way that was somewhat light-hearted and meant to give comfort to both sides. He was really projecting that he was going to be OK, reassuring his friends and family about his well-being.”

He continued, “He seemed to be doing remarkably well, all things considered, but at the same time he wasn’t. It was very difficult. There were cracks in the outward appearance at times when he acknowledged that it was really a struggle. It would wear anyone down. He was confined 23 hours a day.”

Since Gershkovich’s release Van Itallie has not talked with him, but he has been in touch with his family, who are still in Texas with him where he’s getting evaluated and de-briefed at an Army medical center.

Van Itallie noted how Gershkovich has already been talking to reporters about other political prisoners, those who have recently been released and many more who remain in prisons. “He is immediately making the story not about himself but about the broader picture of Russia under Putin,” said Van Itallie. “He’s covered that story for many years now, and he’s obviously become a big part of that story.”

Van Itallie reflected on what lies ahead for his friend in the coming months and years. “I’m sure he’ll get back to telling the story of his 16 months in prison. I’m really happy for him and excited for what he’ll do next in terms of writing and using all this publicity. He’s so famous now, and I’m sure he will want to use that platform for something larger. I’m so proud to call him my friend.”