Graduates of Cuba’s most innovative school will salute its legacy in Miami

This weekend, 200 alumni and friends of Ruston Academy in Havana will gather in Miami to watch a documentary of the school’s storied history and to recreate the 1950s in a dinner dance, fittingly dubbed Una Noche en Tropicana.

This reunion of Rustonians celebrates the joy of reliving the meaning of the education that this very unique private school provided to thousands of Cuban and American children on the island before the 1959 revolution.

A bit of history can help people understand why this event is happening more than 100 years after the school’s founding in 1920 and 60 years after the American-owned school was run by respected and innovative educators James and Sybil Baker.

In the years before it closed, Ruston Academy had been named the best American school in Latin America and listed in the United States among the highest ranked preparatory schools.

The academy is also credited with being the first non-profit foundation in Cuba, with a board of prominent businessmen and educational and civic leaders acting as the governing board for the school.

The Ruston Academy also played a role in a significant chapter in Cuban-exile history. Cuban parents of students who attended Ruston grew concerned about the communist indoctrination spreading across the island a after the revolution and into schools. They approached James Baker for help in getting children out of the island temporarily, until things blew over.

Baker flew to Miami in 1960 seeking help on their behalf and met with an Archdiocese of Miami priest named Father Bryan O. Walsh, who had already launched a mission that would become known as Operation Pedro Pan and eventually spirited 14,000 Cuban children to the United States.

But years before all that happened, the Bakers had arrived at the school in the 1930s to work as teachers. Ruston Academy in Havana had been opened a decade earlier by Hiram Ruston and his sister Martha. They both were educators and committed to spreading Ruston’s legacy.

From its inception, the academy’s approach was original and the Bakers only enhanced its uniqueness. I was a Ruston student from 1948 to 1960.

The school was bilingual, bicultural, co-ed, nonsectarian and had diverse curriculum tracks.

Key to its success was the design of an individual-centered program that nurtured students, inspiring them to enjoy learning; strive for excellence; and acquire values that stressed collaboration, tolerance, respect for others and the responsibilities of citizenship in a democratic society.

Extracurricular activities gave support to academic and social development in two languages and with the values of both Cuban and American culture.

Early on, the school was more than a place for learning. In the late 1930s, the Rustons helped move the school to a colonialstyle house in el Vedado.

Bedrooms and open spaces became classrooms during the day and, at night, home for the Rustons and a few boarders. From then on, the familial environment of those early days continued to characterize the relationships of those involved in the Ruston educational experience.

Then when the Bakers inherited the school, they created the first non-profit foundation on the island.

This new legal status provided financial security and helped them to achieve the dream of having a school built to educate that would replace el Vedado facilities.

A new Ruston school opened in 1955 in Alturas del Country Club. Its architecture preserved the valuable spaces found in the el Vedado school.

Ruston also created the spaces for the three curriculum tracks tailored to different student interests: high school for the college-bound; bachillerato, Cuba’s secondary-education program for the university-bound; and the innovative commercio program, a combination of technical and academic courses for students seeking to enter the workplace immediately.

A lower school, run by Sybil Baker, made learning rich and fun, with music, art, carpentry, leatherwork, plays, poetry and loving teachers who encouraged and motivated.

Fidel Castro and the revolution changed everything and ended the school’s long history in Havana. The school was shut down and confiscated by Fidel Castro’s government on May 1961.

In Miami, reunions of Ruston Academy alumni started in 1975. Parents, students and teachers from all over the world — 500 strong — gathered in the old Sonesta Beach Hotel in Key Biscayne that first year. It was so long ago, The Miami Sound Machine, with Gloria Estefan, played at the reunion.

That night, the Bakers were honored by the alumni, who credited their success to the Ruston education they had received. I am one of them.

One of the alumni, Richard Tanenbaum, along with his wife, Glenna, is generously sponsoring this weekend’s centennial celebration through the Tanenbaum Family Foundation in honor of his mother, Dorothea Shapiro de Tananbaum, a 1936 Ruston graduate and parent of four Ruston students.

With the idea of bringing Ruston Academy back to a democratic Cuba, the Bakers established the Ruston Baker Educational Institution, Inc., in 1992. With the passing of time, new directions for RBEI focused on activities that document the value and the methods of a Ruston education.

Both of the Bakers have passed away, but their legacy is alive with the celebration this weekend to honor Ruston Academy and students they both loved and taught.