State: Housing nominee's rise began in borrowed home

Torn from his family and country, a lanky 15-year-old Cuban boy sat at a kitchen table in Orlando, chewing a new kind of sandwich called peanut butter and jelly. He was trying not to show how bad it tasted when Eileen Young asked a question.

What would you like to call me?

The boy hesitated. This was his first day living in the Young household, in a foreign land where he had been sent to escape Castro and communism. He prayed his real parents would find their way to America too, but there was no guarantee he would see them again.

The boy, Melquiades Rafael Martinez, answered tentatively: "Mommy?"

No, Mrs. Young insisted. You have a mother and father in Cuba and no one takes their place. They settled on Tia for Mrs. Young and Tio for her husband, Walter, Spanish for aunt and uncle.

These were the first strong ties Martinez formed with American citizens, the first of many along a life path that inevitably prompts allusions to Horatio Alger.

That day in 1962, Tia and Tio -- who are now 75 and 79 and live in Sun City Center -- could not have predicted that the boy who arrived in their home penniless and speaking little English would one day give them front-row seats to his swearing-in as chief executive of Orange County government in 1998.

And even then, they could not have predicted that just two years later, he would be picked for a spot in the presidential Cabinet.

Like many immigrants, Martinez's life is a story of hard work, but it also is that of a man who forged tight bonds with people who became mentors, door-openers and friends. The latest of these, George W. Bush, picked Martinez, 54, to be secretary of the $30-billion, 9,100-employee Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The symbolism is hard to overlook. Assuming the Senate confirms him, the person in charge of America's public housing will be a man who settled into a borrowed home with a borrowed family, before he started his rise.

* * *

For those who did not support the communist revolution in Cuba, tension had turned into fear by 1962. Martinez's younger brother Rafael, now an Orlando lawyer, says he can remember a 16-year-old in their town of Sagua La Grande who had been involved in "anti-government activities." He was sent to a firing squad. Just before the state closed its Catholic school, "I remember going to the last Mass . . . and having machine guns pointed (at) me there at the school."

The Martinez family remained open about its Christian faith, which only heightened the tension. The family remembers a school basketball game in which Martinez, then 14, was taunted by the crowd because he wore a religious symbol called a scapular.

"The words "Kill him, he is a Catholic' had a chilling ring for my desperate and frightened parents," Mel Martinez said in testimony before the Senate Judiciary committee last year.

"That scared my parents to death," Rafael said in an interview.

Desperation like this persuaded thousands of families to secret their children away to waiting volunteer families in the United States, in what came to be known as Operation Pedro Pan.

That is how he came to Orlando, where the Youngs had volunteered through the Catholic Church to be a host family. He got along famously with the Youngs and another family he lived with. In summers he got visits from his brother Rafael, who also escaped Cuba and lived with an aunt and uncle who had come to the U.S. after Mel Martinez did.

Even together, the Martinez boys still had a sense of loneliness. "We looked at ourselves many times through those years and said: "We may never see our parents again,"' Rafael recalled.

But an especially proud moment came four years after Mel Martinez's arrival, when their mother and father escaped. Nineteen-year-old Mel had lined up a job for his father, a veterinarian, at a T.G. Lee dairy, and saved $400 to buy a family car.

"I still to this day feel like that was such a neat thing he did," Rafael Martinez said.

* * *

By 1967, after two years in junior college, Martinez had enrolled at Florida State University.

"He spoke flawless English at that time, and he took great pride in that," recalls Ken Connor, a Tallahassee lawyer who was Martinez's roommate in college and now heads the Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy group. Connor got the impression that "when he came to America, he took the bull by the horns and decided he was going to be Americanized."

He had long since shortened Melquiades to Mel. Connor recalls some people making comments such as "wetback" to his friend, but as he tells the story, the comments were not meant to be malicious. The term itself is derogatory and offensive, usually directed at Mexican-Americans. But as Connor recalls, Martinez took it in stride, seemingly accepting that no insults were intended.

Connor and Martinez acquired a beagle named Bengal Lancer, who was supposed to attract the attention of young women while Connor and Martinez walked the pet across campus. The dog performed his job beautifully, Connor claims. But the beagle wasn't present in class one day when a blond-haired, "classic Mobile belle" named Kitty came in.

It was a rare time that Connor can recall Martinez feeling intimidated. But Connor said, "If you don't ask her out, I am." Martinez dated her and married her. They have three children.

After graduating from law school in 1973, Martinez became a personal injury attorney, partnering with Connor for a time.

* * *

When he wasn't practicing law, Martinez became active in civic affairs, everything from serving on the board of the Catholic high school from which he had graduated to a current post as head of the statewide Growth Management Study Commission.

He was helped on this path in his first job after law school when he joined a prominent Orlando firm that included Bill Frederick, who served as Orlando's mayor throughout the 1980s. Martinez attracted the attention of Frederick, who appointed him to the Orlando Housing Authority from 1984 to 1986. That may be his most significant involvement with the work of HUD, which finances public housing across the country. He served as chairman.

By several accounts, Martinez did not seem to be using these posts as steppingstones into politics. But that changed in 1994 when heard from his old roommate Connor, a Republican active in the anti-abortion cause. Connor was running for governor and asked Martinez to be his running mate. He said yes.

As even Connor will say, it was a long shot campaign. But that taste of politics had an effect on Martinez, who found that "he was good at it and he enjoyed it and he could probably be successful at it," said Skip Dalton, a law partner of Martinez's for 11 years.

His election to the Orange County chairman's post in 1998 was his first.

Martinez is a Republican, but in many ways has seemed independent. He once served as president of the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers, hardly a cradle for GOP politicians. As Orange County chairman he shocked developers by saying they should not be allowed to build new housing in areas where schools already were overcrowded.

But some Democrats say Martinez became more partisan during the past two years, even though the chairman's job is officially a non-partisan office. A co-chairman of Bush's campaign in Florida, Martinez vocally criticized the Clinton administration's handling of the Elian Gonzalez affair and blasted Al Gore at a news conference while Gore visited Orlando.

Referring to a local 2000 congressional campaign, the Orlando Sentinel wrote that Martinez's office "was viewed as something of a secondary headquarters for Republican Ric Keller as Martinez and his chief of staff, Dan Murphy, offered advice."

"I was disappointed that he took what had been meant to be and operated as a very non-partisan office and turned it into a very partisan office," said Linda Chapin, the Democrat who lost the congressional race and who preceded Martinez in the county job.

Dick Batchelor, a Democrat and former state House member who knows Martinez, says he should be careful not to get as involved in partisan politics as Batchelor thinks he did during the past two years while Orange County chairman. He thinks Martinez should adopt a policy of "if it ain't housing and urban development, I ain't" doing it.

Others have more experience in housing and finance than Martinez, who aides said is not giving interviews until after his Senate confirmation. Nonetheless, the choice apparently was easy for Bush.

He told the Sentinel just after the announcement that Bush had said, "So I want you on my Cabinet." And that Bush added: "I'm a man of few words, and this is what I wanted to say."

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk