Thousands of Us Still Connected by Glass and Hope

We were all in awe of Masha that summer of 1983 as we watched her build her masterpiece, the massive stained glass window of swirling, bubbling, blue and purple waves that would separate our high school's library from the main hall. Where did she get the confidence, no -- the audacity -- to dream up and then execute such a massive undertaking at 16 years old? The rest of us could barely visualize which shoes to wear that day, but there was Masha, leaving her mark on the world.

Masha was a sweet, quiet Russian girl who had only been at our school for three years, but she spent a lot of time in that library and was quickly befriended by John Ruth, the school librarian. Everyone loved Mr. Ruth, especially the weirdos. He was a tireless advocate for all of us artists, misfits and anyone who felt 'other'. He was truly a lifesaver for countless students throughout the years. Naturally, when Masha told him about her idea for creating a monumental piece of artwork as a gift back to the school that had been so nice and welcoming to her, Mr. Ruth was all in.

It's funny, I don't remember anyone there being particularly nice or welcoming to her. Even her three best buddies -- Liz, Laura and I -- dismissed her as being full of shit when she told us about the atrocities she saw back in Russia, terrible evil committed against little girls as they were walking to school each day -- these things were obviously too horrible to be true. We rolled our eyes when she matter of factly said things like, "My father was an artist who was murdered by the KGB." I mean, sure , her dad was an artist -- we had seen the paintings -- but we were pretty sure the rest was just Masha being her wildly imaginative, inventive self.

Decades later, Google told us the stories were true. Her father was Evgeny Rukhin, a dissident artist considered the leader of the Soviet underground art movement, who died in a highly suspicious studio fire. Masha remembered that soon after the fire, KGB officials showed up on their doorstep and told her mother, "You are no longer Soviet citizens. If you don't want to die, leave the country and never come back."

Masha, her siblings and her mother fled to Vienna. With the help of family and friends, mostly other artists, they were able to hide or smuggle much of her father's artwork out of the country as well. They got visas for the US and moved to NYC, where her mother, Galina Popova, worked as a jewelry designer until Kerrville's own James Avery saw her work and offered her a job designing for him. That's how a quiet Russian girl ended up in Kerrville, Texas, creating a masterpiece in her high school library.

The first time I met Masha was during Spirit Week at the beginning of our junior year. It was "Funeral Day," which meant dressing in all black, as if we were attending a funeral for our rival football team. As a member of the drill team, I was required to participate in Spirit Week, but no one specified how I should do that. My choice of funeral attire was a lowcut black sequined top, a short black leather skirt, fishnet tights, red stilettos and matching flame red lipstick. Masha snuck up behind me in the hallway, leaned in very close to my ear and whispered, "You don't look very sad for a mourner," then winked and glided away.

Later that same day, I was sitting on a bench in front of the school, waiting for my ride. Masha planted herself beside me and pronounced, "I see you are an artist. I can tell because of how you hold your middle finger and ring finger together. I'm an artist too." And that was that; we were friends. Masha, Liz, Laura and me were the four musketeers who got each other through the next two hellish years of high school in small town 1980's Texas. After graduation we all sort of drifted our own separate directions, barely keeping in touch for years at a time.

The last time I saw Masha was in the spring of 1989, when soon-to-be-Hubby and I went to her house to be sure the had gotten our wedding invitation, since she hadn't responded. The person who came to the door was almost unrecognizable. Standing in her living room, watching in fascination as her pet boa constrictor slowly wrapped itself around my arm, I knew that I was communicating directly with the drugs coursing through her veins, not her. She did not come to the wedding. She was only 25 years old when she took her own life.

Our old high school building has since been torn down, but thankfully, Mr. Ruth is still around and together with Masha's brother Lev, also a brilliant artist, they ensured Masha's masterpiece was carefully preserved and given a good home in the newly built junior high school. The rededication ceremony was big local news because literally everyone who had walked through that school since 1984 had some memory of her stained glass mural; that's a connection that she gave to thousands of people. Thousands of us have stood looking up at that wall and felt the wonder of how something so bold, so hopeful and full of life and joy could have come to be. Masha did that. Masha was that.