By TREVOR ARMBRISTER

Shortly  after 4 a.m. on March 18, 1961, guards led a brown-eyed, 23-year-old blonde through the gates of Cuba's Guanabacoa prison. A sergeant examined her documents. "Well, well," he said. "Olga Rodriguez Morgan, widow of William Morgan, the American."

'Viuda'--widow. Olga suddenly knew that her husband was dead, executed by one of Fidel Castro's firing squads. With a cry, she lunged and tried to strangle the sergeant. The guards dragged her to a cell.

Daughter of a civil servant in the city of Santa Clara, Olga Rodriguez was president of her high school's student body in 1956, and everyone assumed that she would go to the university in Havana. Instead, she joined guerrillas battling the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. In April 1958, she met William Morgan, an American from Ohio who had volunteered to help the rebels. In November, Olga and William were married.

On January 1, 1959, Castro took control. Both Morgans thought he had the right ideas. Cuba needed new schools, hospitals, agrarian reform, honest government. But soon hundreds of Cubans were thrown into prison or executed. Russian "advisers" arrived. Within two years, William, now the father of two little girls, was making no secret of his disillusionment.

Castro's police arrested him on October 17, 1960. Five months later, Olga was convicted of "high treason" and jailed.

Olga felt no desire to live; but one day, three months after her imprisonment, she read in her Bible about Job's patient acceptance of personal disaster. She became determined to survive, to fight back as best she could. Her dream: to spirit her whole family out of Cuba to freedom.

She made a half-dozen attempts to escape from various prisons in which she was held. Each time, she was caught. Once, her captors added 5 years to her 30-year term; usually, they-beat her with rubber truncheons. One beating permanently damaged her right eye.

One way to avoid such treatment was to sign up for "re-education" lectures glorifying communism in Cuba. Olga refused. She frequently was thrown into solitary confinement, once, for 59 days. She recalls a period of 18 months when she was permitted no visits from her parents or sister.

Built to accommodate one person, the average prison cell held four or five. A hole in a corner of the floor was used as a latrine. Most of the time the water in the sink was turned off. Insects infested the meager rations of macaroni, rice, peas and, occasionally, foul-smelling meat. Lizards and spiders slithered over the women at night; rats often scampered over them. Olga tried not to hear the screams.

On August 2, 1971, she was released from prison without explanation--free for the first time in more than a decade. Olga's sister and brother-in-law drove to Havana to pick her up. They brought her older daughter Loretta, now 12. Mother and daughter embraced. But when they passed the prison where William had been shot, Loretta jumped out of the car and began singing a revolutionary song. Back in the car, she refused to talk to her mother.

Olga's home had been confiscated by the regime, and she had to stay with her parents in Santa Clara. There, Loretta announced, "You're a traitor to Cuba. You can sleep in the hall."

Three weeks later Loretta attacked her mother--pulling at her hair, tearing at her clothes, attempting to rip from her neck the thin gold chain that William had given her. Olga tried not to show the terrible pain. Less than a week after that, Loretta grabbed a pair of scissors and tried to stab her.

Several months passed. Eleven-year-old Olgita became increasingly hostile until one day she, too, resorted to force. "You abandoned us," she cried, pushing and shoving her mother. "You chose to spend years in prison instead of with us."

In desperation, Olga sought help from old friends, a priest and a psychologist. Both daughters, they agreed, had suffered terribly. Relatives had told them that their father was in heaven and their mother was in the hospital with a contagious disease. They had been brutally shocked to learn that their father had been executed and their mother was in prison.

The priest said Olga should find a job, and, to take pressure off the girls, to give them time to adjust, she should find somewhere else to live. But former political prisoners couldn't find jobs. A married sister in New Jersey had loaned her $5000 upon her release from jail. Olga had hoped to use this money to get her family out of Cuba. Now she needed it for her ailing parents, to provide for her children and to keep alive.

Finally, nuns gave her a room and meals in their Havana convent. In return, she helped them care for the sick. She also knitted sweaters which earned her about $65 a month. As often as she could, she journeyed back to Santa Clara and gave her daughters what money she had left.

Her communist neighbors in Santa Clara saw to it that Olga was hauled into court frequently, accused of "attempting to brainwash" the girls. She denied the charge. Any brainwashing, she knew, was coming from the principal of the children's school, who taught them communist songs and Marxist dogma.

Olga confronted the woman. "I know what you're trying to do with my children," she said. "Even if it means that I have to go back to prison, I won't permit it." Day after day, Loretta and Olgita listened to their teachers espouse communism. Every night they returned home to a family who rejected it.

As the months went by, both Loretta and Olgita began to be struck by the contradictions between what they were told and what they saw. Cuba, their teachers said, was a "workers' paradise." Yet the children knew that each person was allowed to buy only one pair of shoes per year. One day Loretta misbehaved in class. Criticizing her, the teacher referred to her father as a traitor. Loretta ran forward and started hitting her. She would have to apologize to the entire school, the principal decreed. When she rose to speak, however, Loretta defended her attack. She had to fight for her father's memory, she said.

For Loretta, that moment was the catalyst that drove her back into her mother's arms. Olgita followed.

Early in 1978, Loretta fell in love with a young man of 19, and Olga gave her consent to their marriage. Soon Olgita, too, met a young man and, with Olga's approval, married him.

In September of 1978, Castro announced that any current or former prisoners who wanted to leave Cuba could go, and take their families, after they'd obtained the necessary documents. Friends in Florida sent the funds Olga needed to fly her parents, her daughters and their husbands and her one granddaughter, her sister and brother-in-law and their two children to the United States.

But there was one hitch. Olga would have to remain. Her case was "special," the emigration office ruled. "We'll stay, too, because we love you," said Loretta and Olgita. But Olga threw her arms around them. "It's your responsibility to leave with your husbands now," she said. "This has been my dream. Our family will be free."

On the night of October 27,1979, Olga watched the plane carrying her family take off. The next day she visited her husband's grave and knelt in prayer.

Olga visited the emigration office almost every day. Someone told her that Castro wanted to get rid of common criminals. She filled out a form stating that she was a prostitute who had been instigating people to riot. Less than two weeks later, an official called her in. "We will not be able to process you," he said, "because the information you have put on this form is not true." She returned to the convent convinced that she would never see her family again.

But late in July 1980, Castro's communist bureaucracy relented and informed Olga--after subjecting her to nearly 20 years of horror--that she would be issued a passport. On August 17, she journeyed to Mariel, was handed her passport and finally boarded a boat to Florida.

The boat's engines failed at sea. Strong winds whipped up waves that threatened to capsize the vessel. Fortunately, a Coast Guard cutter arrived in time and towed the boat to Key West, ending a 29-hour ordeal. Olga carried her only possessions--a purse, a comb, a toothbrush and a pen, plus the clothes she had on. But she was free at last.

At a processing center in Miami, she called her relatives. As they arrived and walked through the parking lot, Olga saw Olgita running toward her, crying tears of joy. Obviously pregnant, she pointed to her stomach and said, "Look, I'm going to have a baby. I'm going to have an American baby."

Olga smiled. "We're all Americans now," she said.