Local school celebrates 50 years

MIAMI (WSVN) -- Belen Jesuit Preparatory School celebrated it's 50-year Golden Jubilee, and has a remarkable story.

The all-boys school, founded in Havana, Cuba in 1854, now calls Miami home after everything changed in 1961. "We always go down in history as being the school Fidel Castro happened to graduate from, and that he turned on because he was the one who expelled us in '61," said principal Father Willie Garcia-Tunon.

Castro graduated from Belen in 1945. Castro's communist regime later confiscated the school and exiled it's Jesuit priests. Then the school found a new home in Miami. "I think that Belen kind of personifies this whole concept of the 'American Dream.' I mean you are talking about really getting here with nothing," said Garcia-Tunon.

Today, 1,500 students attend Belen at it's current 33-acre campus in Western Miami-Dade, coming a long way from where it used to be housed in an old warehouse on Southwest Eighth Street. "The fact that this school is able to continue it's legacy, in a completely different country, is such a big deal," said student Carlos Fernandez.

Legacy students have parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents who attended Belen, all the way back to the island nation. "You look around the hallways, and you think, 'Wow, this existed back then, and it's here today,'" said student Kenji Martinez.

Some of the former students have even returned to the school to teach. "They realize that the teacher walked their same steps, went through the same experiences that they went through," said teacher Juan Vazquez.

"Kids who graduate here every year just become incredible individuals," said student Anthony Rueda.

Among Belen's famous alumni is celebrity talker Perez Hilton, former Miami mayor Manny Diaz, and 7's own entertainment guru Louis Aguirre-- to name a few.

The school says it prides itself on a commitment to academics and preparing the leaders of tomorrow, today. "The school has been a very solid school, since the beginning, since the foundation," said band director Marlene Urbay.

With a foundation built on the past, the school looks to the future with no telling how the next 50 years may play out. "Hopefully, it will even be more incredible than it is right now," said Rueda.

Belen's Jubilee continues with a series of cultural events planned well into 2012.

For more information:
Belen Jesuit Preparatory School Golden Jubilee Cultural Series
www.belenjesuit.org/jubilee

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