The Guinea Heritage Association held a holiday party and a community awareness event Saturday at Buck Rowe’s store at Bena.

The event, billed as “Christmas at Buck’s,” was a chance for current and past residents of the Guinea area of lower Gloucester to meet and greet each other while enjoying refreshments, said Leslie Belvin, vice president of the association.

Just as important, Belvin said the holiday event was an opportunity to educate people about efforts GHA has underway to build a museum that recognizes the community’s longstanding maritime heritage.

Although no fund drive goal has been announced nor a timeframe for when the group expects to open the museum, Belvin said various ideas have surfaced from an organizing committee. Preliminary plans call for a museum, possibly a two-story building, to be built on the corner of Guinea and Mark Pine roads, across Guinea Road from the Bena Post Office on a vacant lot that housed a garage and automotive bu...