Built by Generations

On September 26, 1949, eight students gathered for the first meeting of what would become Taipei American School. The meeting took place in the basement of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary on Zhongshan North Road. Seventy-seven years later, thousands of students, faculty, staff, families, and alumni have passed through TAS, across four campuses and generations of change. 

It is easy to tell that story through the numbers: eight students became thousands. A school that began in a basement moved from campus to campus before settling in Tianmu in 1989. The community grew, nearly disappeared, and grew again. The world around it changed, sometimes dramatically. 

But a school does not survive for 77 years because of buildings or milestones. 

It survives because of the countless people who keep showing up. 

That is the story Richard Arnold, TAS Historian and Legacy Advisor, has spent more than five decades watching unfold. It is also the story preserved in Ties That Bind, TAS's oral history of its first 50 years, and in the memories of the generations who lived the school's history themselves.

And some of those stories begin with things that seem very ordinary.

A Stove, A Bus, A Relationship

When Mr. Arnold arrived at TAS in 1970, Mr. Yang was in charge of transportation and the school's bus drivers. In those days, overseas hires were provided with basic furniture when they arrived. When Mr. Arnold arrived from America, the school had run out of stoves, and Mr. Yang, who was coordinating all of the furniture, came to tell Arnold that he would personally find him a new one.

Over time, they developed a friendship.

Mr. Yang drove the buses for Mr. Arnold's Orphanage Club outings, helping make possible the experiences Mr. Arnold wanted his students to have beyond the classroom. He was part of the everyday work that kept the school moving: getting students safely to and from school, supporting teachers, and showing up day after day.

After spending his days working with TAS's bus drivers and helping students get to school safely, Mr. Yang would go to English classes after work. He was working to improve his language skills, working to build opportunities for the generations that would come after him.

Decades later, one of his granddaughters earned a full scholarship to Carnegie Mellon University. She later spent a semester at the University of Southern California, where she met her future husband, who turned out to be the brother of a former TAS student Mr. Arnold had taught at Taipei American School.

A bus driver. A teacher. A student. A granddaughter. A former Tiger who becomes part of another generation's story.

That is where the history of TAS becomes bigger than the people whose names appear in its official records.

Because schools are built not only by the people whose names are on buildings or whose decisions appear in board minutes. They are built by the people who drive the buses, greet students, prepare meals, maintain the campus, answer phones, teach classes, care for children, organize activities, open doors, and quietly make it possible for everyone else to do their work.

These are the unsung heroes of TAS.

Many were born locally, grew up here, or have spent decades here. They have dedicated countless years, some decades, to this school. Some have watched students arrive as kindergartners and later watched them walk across the stage as seniors. Some have seen their own children, siblings, spouses, or grandchildren become part of the TAS community. Others have simply returned to work every morning, year after year, making sure the school could keep moving forward and be the best possible environment for students to learn in.

These stories rarely become the stories that make their way into history books. But they are the foundation of TAS's history.

When we look at 77 years of Taipei American School, we see the milestones: new campuses, graduating classes, changing enrollment, new programs, and generations of Tigers and their incredible achievements. Underneath every one of those milestones are people.

People who cared enough to stay. People who cared enough to help. People who believed in the school, believed in its students, and believed that the work they were doing mattered. The history that we have today, and the students who were able to walk through the halls of TAS, are in large part due to them.

That may be one of the most important things to remember on September 26.

TAS has endured not because of any one person, but because thousands of people, many whose names we may never know, have cared for this school and the people within it.

They make up the bedrock of this school's history. They are why this school has endured.

The People Behind the Names

In Ties That Bind, stories of TAS's early decades reveal a school being built not simply through institutional decisions, but through the people who gave themselves to it.

Hope Phillips arrived at TAS in 1955. Her husband, Dr. Robert Phillips, had been sent to Taipei by the U.S. government to establish a tropical medicine research center. Phillips had worked in tropical medicine in Cairo, Egypt, and had an internationally recognized career of her own. Yet, as she recalled in Ties That Bind, she never imagined that she would end up working at TAS.

She became an English teacher, college counselor, and eventually, in 1970, Middle School principal.

She had six children of her own. At TAS, she made a point of standing in the courtyard every morning to greet Middle School students as they arrived. By the end of the year, she knew every student by name.

When report cards came around, she stayed overnight at school to make sure every report was personal and meaningful to all of her students, sleeping and showering in the nurse's office so she could finish the work. The details are almost hard to imagine now.

Mr. Arnold remembers that same kind of care.

When he became sick during the school week and was living on the second floor of an apartment building in Shipai, Ms. Phillips showed up at his door during her lunch break. She had driven her little Mustang convertible across Taipei, carrying two baskets of baby food and fruit for him to eat because she was worried about him.

Sam G. had graduated from TAS in the 1960s. She was, he remembers, something of a legend among the Middle School students, with everyone hoping for a chance to talk to her. A former middle schooler, Sam remembers the Mustang convertible that she drove and all the students hoping for just a few minutes of her time, because what if her coolness could rub off on them?

But what the students and faculty remember most is not the Mustang.

It is the way that she cared. Today, she has the Hope Phillips Scholarship named after her, in place to support students who attend the school and fall on hard times, working to care for and support the students with the same diligence that Hope Phillips did when she walked these grounds.

A School That Had to Find a Way Forward

There were plenty of moments when the future of TAS was not certain. The fact that it is here today, ready to celebrate its 77th anniversary, cannot be taken for granted.

The school was founded at a remarkable moment in Taiwan's history. In 1949, there were large changes happening throughout Asia and the broader world. As families arrived in Taiwan, bringing with them either experience with a Western education or coming from America themselves, they realized that they wanted a place where students could have access to a Western education in Taiwan. More families arrived in Taiwan in the years that followed, and TAS became part of a rapidly changing expatriate and international community.

The school grew quickly. It moved to a larger campus on Chang'an East Road in 1953, graduated its first class of 14 seniors in 1956, and eventually established its Shilin campus. By 1969, enrollment had reached nearly 3,000 students.

Then the world changed again.

At the beginning of the 1970s, the school's population was 3,000. By the end of the decade, enrollment had fallen to roughly 700. TAS had lost more than half of its students. And the challenges were not only demographic.

The Shilin campus was vulnerable to flooding. During severe typhoons, water would rise, flooding the first floor, leaving behind mud, debris, and poisonous snakes stranded on high shelves after the waters receded. There were many floods that were detrimental to the school.

TAS had to decide what came next. If it was possible for it to survive and then thrive.

It did.

As Taiwan's economy transformed, new families arrived. The composition of TAS changed. By the early 1980s, many students were Taiwanese as well as U.S. citizens. In 1989, the school moved again, this time to the Tianmu campus it occupies today.

The TAS of today was not inevitable.

It was built through generations of people adapting to a changing Taiwan and a changing world.

Look Around

Some of that history is still physically here.

There is a bell on campus, recently restored and repainted, that alumni from the '80s were thrilled to see looking so beautiful. The pagoda was created by TAS custodians at the old downtown campus, simply because they cared enough about the students to build something for them. The Thinker statue is another relic of earlier generations.

These objects can look like scenery to someone encountering them every day. But they are also evidence.

They remind us that the school was built by generations of people that current students will never know. Many of those people were never in classrooms at all.

Mr. Arnold talks about the local employees who have spent decades at TAS, from bus monitors who have watched kindergarteners become seniors; staff members whose families have worked at the school for generations; people who know students not just as names on a roster, but as children they watched grow up.

There is Tina, who spent roughly four decades at TAS as a bus monitor and a cafeteria cashier before retiring. There is Susie in the snack bar, whose family has become woven into the school community across generations and who students still remember when they come back decades later, because they grew up seeing her face every day as they got their meals. There are custodians, bus drivers, office staff, maintenance workers, cafeteria employees, and countless others whose work has made the daily life of TAS possible.

Sophie, who worked here from 1996–2010, said, “We must salute all the staff, from the custodians, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, secretaries. Especially the custodians, who do so much. They are at every event, setting up, taking down, making sure that things run smoothly so that these kids can learn and have meaningful experiences.”

The Legacy Continues

“It is so important for kids to see different cultures and different perspectives from around the world,” says Mr. Arnold, when reflecting on what the legacy of Taipei American School is. “It is so hard to not treat someone with respect, regardless of their background, if you truly come to know them. And that is one thing we hope students can take from their time here.”

Today, TAS describes its history as a legacy of generations of students, teachers, and families. Its current Legacy Initiative is explicitly built around preserving that living history through oral histories, archival storytelling, and community engagement, with the goal of carrying that work toward the school's 80th anniversary.

Maybe the most important part of that legacy is not something that can be preserved in a book.

It is the way one generation takes care of the next.

A teacher remembers a student. A bus driver enables a student to come to school to learn every single day. A principal learns every student's name. The secretary knows everyone's face and the name of each sibling. Tigers become interwoven in a community and a family whose goal is to take care of one another and create a better world and a better campus for the ones who will come after them.

The years change.

The buildings change.

The world changes.

But the people keep carrying the story forward.

On September 26, 1949, eight students began that story.

Seventy-seven years later, every Tiger who walks through TAS becomes part of it, inheriting something built by people they may never meet, and eventually leaving something behind for those who come next.

That may be the most enduring history of Taipei American School: not simply that it has lasted for 77 years, but that generation after generation of people, remembered in its history books or known only through the lives they touched, have given it a reason to continue.