Kate Plumer Bryan Memorial School

Kate Plumer Bryan Memorial School (American School)

On May 5, 1903, one year after the inauguration of the Government of the Republic of Cuba, Kate Plumer Bryan Memorial School, also known as the American School opened its doors in the Villa of Güines. The founders of this new school were two Presbyterian Missionaries, Dr. Robert Wharton and Miss Beulah Wilson, who started this endeavor moved by the Christian ideals of love and service.

Under the supervision of Mr. Wharton and the competent and loving stewardship of Miss Wilson, who very soon earned the trust and love of the Güineros, the school grew rapidly. First it was functioning on Valdés Street, thereafter it went into another and bigger place on Havana Street (in a house formerly occupied by one of the Courts).

After several years, due to the magnanimity of an altruistic American lady, Mrs. Kate Plumer Bryan, it was possible to build on #356 Havana Street the striking Spanish style building, surrounded by beautiful and green backyards where it was finally established.

Under the direction of other Missionaries as dedicated as Miss Wilson, the unforgettable Miss Hillard, Miss Patterson, Mr. Torres, Mr. Guitart and others, the school, besides its elementary level, kept growing providing classes of secondary education and commerce staffed by competent and dedicated teachers. It also had its own publication named The Lily of the Valley that informed teachers, parents, students and the community in general of the school’s activities.

Sports were given a prominent place as another educational aspect. Several national and Central-American champions were made on the school’s grounds.

When the Government established in 1937 Güines High School, the classrooms for secondary education at Kate Plumer Bryan Memorial School, where many professionals passed through them who later on, practiced in Güines, were closed. The secondary education was becoming a burden but the Board of Missions of the Presbyterian Church kept supporting it as long as it was useful and necessary to the community.

After almost 25 years, the school kept working as an elementary and basic secondary school under the dynamic direction of Mr. Raúl Guitart, with new methods such as Güines Plan and different pedagogical activities, that made the school a center of learning where the child exercised all of his faculties.

Kate Plumer Bryan Memorial School served Güines and Cuba for 58 years.

In 1961, the Government of Castro confiscated the school’s building, but the Communists did not steal the spiritual force that animated and gave reason to be to the American School. The Faculty refused to work under a system that asked them to deny all of what they had believed, loved and preached. The majority of students and alumni decided to go into exile and today, in foreign lands, as free men and women, they affirm their right to worship God according to their conscience and to live under the principles of justice and democracy in which they were educated.

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