Kernersville man recalls life in Cuba, Marine service

KERNERSVILLE, N.C. (WGHP) — Choices don’t come any more difficult than choosing between your homeland and the family you have there and a new country where your children can have something better.

Gunther Osorio faced that choice while growing up in Santiago de Cuba, which is the island’s second-largest city on its south coast. Even though his father was a physician, Gunther said he had little growing up, but the society kept everyone’s gaze off what other countries had.

“We were told that pretty much everything outside of Cuba was bad, literally,” Gunther said. “The capitalistic approach of an economy was used to enrich a top portion of the people so that the situation that we had in Cuba at the time was due to them having an embargo against Cuba. Pretty much they brainwashed you.”

He said he had an enjoyable childhood.

“Even though you have nothing, literally, you still have to try to be happy,” Gunther said. “And Cubans in Cuba with nothing … still have time to dance, to enjoy each other company. … Those are the things that you cherish, that you work for, but everything else is just suffering.”

Gunther was an excellent swimmer from an early age and was good enough to represent Cuba at international events. He used the 2003 Pan Am Games in the Dominican Republic as an opportunity to escape.

Gunther made it to Puerto Rico and the mainland US eventually, where he joined the Marine Corps and spent eight years serving, including two overseas tours.

“I wanted to be part of something bigger, do something greater and, at the same time, kind of like repay the opportunity to be here,” Gunther said. “And on the other hand, also avoid people kind of like pointing the finger at you like, ‘You’re an immigrant. You’re here taking things away from me.'”

After his service, he became a swim coach in the US, which is where we found him, teaching kids in Kernersville. He says connecting with young swimmers and seeing them internalize life lessons that sports can teach is worth more than any material thing he could have wished for growing up.

“When you get a kid or a child to … do something in the water, and their eyes go back at you. … There is nothing better than that,” Gunther said.

See more of Gunther’s story in this edition of The Buckley Report.

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