Comment OAKMONT, Pa. — The “other American” imprisoned in Russia has a name, too. He was always just Mr. Fogel to the students he entranced with lectures about the Cold War. But he is Marc Hilliard Fogel on his well-worn passports, abundantly stamped from his many years of teaching International Baccalaureate history courses at schools attended by the children of U.S. diplomats and the global elite in Colombia, Venezuela, Oman, Malaysia and, for the past 10 years, in Russia. Fogel’s charmed life has turned dark at the age of 60. He never sought notoriety. But he and his family slowly have come to the realization that telling the world his name could be his salvation. For the past 11 months, Fogel has languished in Russian detention centers following his August 2021 arrest for trying to enter the country with about half an ounce of medical marijuana he’d been prescribed in the United States for chronic pain after numerous injuries and surgeries. First he endlessly awaited trial, often in crowded, smoke-choked cells. More recently, he has been serving the first weeks of an incomprehensible 14-year sentence handed down by a Russian judge in June. Fogel’s plight parallels a similar case that has played big on news websites, led cable newscasts and prompted White House pronouncements: the trial of WNBA basketball star Brittney Griner, who also was arrested for attempting to enter Russia with a small amount of medical marijuana. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the United States has made a “substantial proposal” to Russia to secure the release of Griner and another jailed American, Paul Whelan, who is serving a 16-year Russian sentence on spy charges he has denied. Marc Fogel’s wife, Jane Fogel, said in an interview after the news broke that she’s still hoping her husband can be included in a swap. But those hopes are fading, she said, speaking publicly for the first time about her husband’s case. “There’s a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that Marc will be left behind,” Jane Fogel said Wednesday after the announcement about the possible swap including Griner and Whelan. “It’s terrifying. I would hope that President Biden and especially first lady Jill Biden, who is an educator, realize the importance of including Marc in addition to Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan.” In suburban Pittsburgh, Jane Fogel has been watching the Griner case spool out and wondered whether her husband has been forgotten. Griner’s wife, Cherelle, received a call from the president. The Fogels have been stalled at the mid-functionary level of the U.S. State Department. Speculation about a possible prisoner swap before Blinken’s announcement on Wednesday had earlier trickled into his Russian prison cell, compounding his anxiety. “That hurt,” Marc Fogel wrote in a letter home referencing the prisoner-exchange reports. “Teachers are at least as important as bballers.” In an email reply to an inquiry from The Washington Post, a State Department official said the agency is aware of Fogel’s case but did not provide any further information, citing privacy reasons. The official did not respond to interview requests. After Biden’s call with Griner’s wife, the White House issued a summary of the conversation saying he told her the U.S. government was working hard to secure the release of Griner and another American and Whelan. Biden added that his administration is pushing for the release of “other” U.S. nationals imprisoned in Russia and other countries. Marc Fogel’s name did not appear. “It seems like the government is working really hard for Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan,” Jane Fogel, 60, said in an interview last week at her home, surrounded by mementos of the family’s world-wandering. “We want them to work for us, too.” Jane Fogel was quick to point out that she’s hopeful Griner and Whelan will also be released. Griner herself has issued a statement pleading for the release of other Americans. It’s hard to escape the dread that her husband’s case will never become a priority. That she may never see him again. At times, she said, tearfully, she feels like a “widow.”

Encouraging students to ‘live life’ Marc Fogel was always the lucky one. No matter the tricky situation, he seemed to land on his feet, like a cat, his friends would say. Personable, athletic, a little silly sometimes, the Pittsburgh-area native with that big radiant smile, the square jaw, the thick head of wavy hair, could chat up anyone. Things were forever falling into place for him. A madcap idea to hitchhike from Prince George’s County, where he was teaching at a public middle school, to see the 1994 Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Pittsburgh led to a chance encounter with his future wife, Jane, a high school friend he’d seen only occasionally since they graduated a decade-and-a-half earlier. Marc Fogel had a kind of wanderlust that was irresistible. Lying on a beach in Thailand one New Year’s Eve in the mid-1990s, he and Jane came up with a plan — they’d get married, have children and teach abroad. Jane told her mother that she’d be back in eight months. It turned out to be 27 years. They went to places that evoked fear and blank stares among their friends and family. And they gushed about them. The country house surrounded by flowers where they lived outside Medellín, Colombia; the home at the beach in Oman where their eldest son learned to snorkel. An exception was Caracas, Venezuela, where a neighbor was murdered and a student’s father was seriously injured in a shooting. Their movements became so limited because of safety concerns that their sons, Sam and Ethan, staged what they jokingly call “a coup” to get the family to move. Former students remember Marc as an upbeat presence in their lives, who was always saying, “‘It’s a great day to be alive!’ He encouraged the students to also live life, not just ponder it,” said Jukka Haapakoski, a student of Marc’s in Kuala Lumpur in the 1990s who is now CEO of a Finnish organization that advocates on behalf of unemployed people. In 2012, after leaving Caracas, the Fogels landed jobs at the Anglo-American School in Moscow, a prestigious $34,000-a-year, pre-K-12 institution that had been established by the U.S., Canadian and British embassies. Their salaries were far beyond anything they could make teaching in the United States. They had an apartment on a vibrant Moscow street. They loved the place. They bopped around Europe visiting friends on school breaks. They mingled with the embassy crowd and taught their kids. Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor who was U.S. ambassador to Russia for part of the Fogels’ tenure in Moscow, said his son was captivated by Marc’s infectious teaching style. “Mr. Fogel, as he called him, made him excited about these issues in a way that he’d never been before, despite having met [President] Barack Obama and all kinds of fancy people,” McFaul said. In the past few years, as tensions between the United States and Russia grew, it became harder for the Fogels to persuade family and friends that they were in some kind of schoolteacher paradise. “I would say, ‘What are you doing there? Putin is a monster,’” Marc’s sister, Elise Hyland, said. Her brother always responded by saying Russians are “lovely people,” and that “you have to understand their culture to understand what’s happening now,” Hyland recalled. Marc was careful to avoid any impression that he was taking political positions, said his friend and fellow teacher, Steve Coffey. Sometimes they would change lunch plans just to avoid neighborhoods where demonstrations might be happening. All the while, Marc’s body was falling apart. He’d had surgeries on his back and shoulder, and a knee replacement. The pain was never-ending. He walked with a pronounced limp. Coffey remembers his friend’s signature farewell after a long day: “All right, buddy, I’m going to go hit the bath.” Marc was adamant about not taking opioids. In 2021, a doctor recommended he try medical marijuana. It not only helped with the pain — he liked it in the same way someone else might like a glass of wine or a beer. While home in Pennsylvania for the summer break in 2021, Marc and Jane had to decide whether they’d go back to Russia. Jane was hesitant to return, but her husband talked her into it. Just one more year. Then he would retire, and they could live in their snug Oakmont house with the big oak tree out back and the bay window overlooking the lawn. They could host barbecues. They could make new friends in their neighborhood. After three decades abroad, a “normal” life, as she put it, sounded “exotic.”

‘I’m really in trouble’ On Aug. 14, 2021, the Fogels landed at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow after the long flight from New York on the Russian airline Aeroflot. When they deplaned, Jane noticed they were in a different terminal than usual with more security, a change from the lax environment they’d encountered in previous years. She stopped at the restroom and her husband went ahead to the security checkpoint. When she caught up with him, she could tell something was wrong. His breath had quickened so much that his mask was inflating and deflating like a balloon. “Jane,” he said, “I’m really in trouble.” He’d packed 14 vape cartridges of medical marijuana into his suitcase, stuffing some in his shoes, and placed some cannabis buds in a contact lens case, his wife said. Jane said she had no idea he’d done it. But why take such a risk? “It’s pretty simple,” his son Ethan said of his father’s plan to bring medical marijuana into Russia. “He thought he could get away with it.” Still, this lucky man, this man who always seemed to have things go his way, assumed this would be a situation that wouldn’t end up so badly. Maybe he’d just…