AUGUST 2001
HUD SECRETARY WAS ONCE A BOY IN A REFUGEE CAMP
A homesick Melquiades Raphael Martinez was in a Florida camp
for Cuban refugees when he was 15.
The year was 1962, and he had been airlifted away from Fidel
Castro's revolution. In the camp, Martinez knew so little English
that he couldn't ask a long-distance operator to help him phone
home.
Today, almost 40 years later, he has mastered English and earned
two degrees at Florida State. He has also mastered public administration
and public speaking. And some say he's mastered U.S. politics.
President Bush last year appointed him secretary of the U. S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Martinez is the first Cuban in the Cabinet, and, as FSU President
Sandy D'Alemberte put it, "the first Seminole" in that
post.
"Anything you can dream can come true," he told FSU's
April commencement audience.
Martinez's wife, Kathryn, is also a Florida State graduate. He
met her in the Bellamy Building when he asked her to share her
notes in anthropology. They started their married life together
in Burt Reynolds Hall, where Martinez was apartment manager.
Later, he said, they moved up to the "big time" in
Alumni Village. Martinez worked construction for Ajax and sold
adsfor the Florida Flambeau, then FSU's student newspaper. He
also attended law school, where his dream of a liberated Cuba
kept his interest on international law. But he became a trial
lawyer.
In 1984, Bill Frederick, a law partner, became mayor of Orlando,
and Martinez began his climb in public administration.
He was head of the Orlando Housing Authority and, later, of the
Orlando Utilities Commission.
He campaigned in 1992 for the nomination of lieutenant governor
as a running mate to Ken Connor, a longtime FSU friend and anti-abortion
activist.
Connor and Martinez lost, and Martinez was later elected to Orlando's
County Commission.
He also became co-chairman of the Florida campaign for George
W. Bush, and cast an electoral vote that gave Bush the presidency.
Martinez has made a name for himself as a reasonable person,
an assessment shared by Republicans and Democrats.
Bob Rackleff, a Democratic Leon County commissioner, for example,
came away from a Martinez speech about housing with the impression
that Martinez is indeed "all right."
Martinez has been president of the law school alumni, and a football
season-ticket holder. - Dana Peck
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