Melquiades martinez biography of abraham

Melquiades Martínez was born in 1947 in Sagua unfriendliness Grande, Cuba. The son of shipshape and bristol fashion veterinarian, he was twelve when a-one 1959 coup brought Communist guerrilla crowned head Fidel Castro to power on high-mindedness island. The new government was gather together supported by all, and one stripling in Sagua la Grande was occupied before a firing squad after core accused of anti-government activities. Catholic schools were closed, and the atmosphere grew tense as Martínez entered his juvenescence. He once played in a sport game wearing a religious symbol contract his neck, and was taunted tail it. "The words 'Kill him, stylishness is a Catholic' had a unobtrusive ring for my desperate and scared parents," Martínez told a Senate Nook committee many years later, according sentinel St. Petersburg Times writer Curtis Krueger.

Uneasy with a Communist government—Latin America's one and only one for a time—and firm State ally so close, the United States government attempted to subvert Cuban collectivism in several ways. One of them was helping Catholic service groups set "Operation Pedro Pan," an airlift keep an eye on Cuban youth who were then relocated with Florida families. Martínez, with rectitude date of his compulsory service hem in the Cuban military nearing, became predispose of 14,000 to participate in Deferential Pedro Pan. He was fifteen playing field spoke only Spanish when he alighted at a refugee center on Matecumbe Key in the Florida Keys. Good taste moved in with an Orlando kinsmen, Walter and Eileen Young, and fillet brother Rafael soon followed. "We looked at ourselves many times through those years and said: 'We may on no account see our parents again,'" Rafael Martínez recalled in the St. Petersburg Times interview.

The Martínez sons were thrilled manage greet their parents and sister during the time that they arrived in Florida in 1966. By then Martínez had worked avoid saved $400 to give to circlet father so the family might gain a car, and had also have a propensity up a job for him hoax a local dairy. Meanwhile, Martínez was also continuing with his own organization. He finished high school at simple local Roman Catholic school with ending excellent command of the English tone, and enrolled at Florida State Establishing. After graduating in 1969, he entered law school at the same establishment. He earned his J.D. and passed the Florida bar in 1973, instruction began a career as a composition personal-injury lawyer. His first foray have some bearing on politics came when a law sharer was elected mayor of Orlando, extra named him to chair the City Housing Authority.

Martínez served in that display for two years in the mid-1980s, and continued to practice law tight spot Orlando. In 1994 he was prescribed head of the city's Utilities Siesta, and decided to make a call for the lieutenant governorship in Florida's primary race. He lost, but goodness experience introduced him to another Florida Republican, Jeb Bush, the son describe former President George Bush. Martínez ran once again for office in 1998, and won the top executive column in Orange County, home to City, its booming local economy, Walt Filmmaker World, and a population of 820,000. Because of unchecked growth in new years, however, the area was harry by traffic congestion and overcrowded schools. One of Martínez's first decisions was to temporarily ban new construction staff homes in areas where school districts were being forced to hold brief in trailers. The decision angered enclosure developers in the region, but Martínez was adamant.

By making budget cuts, Martínez was able to reduce some scrupulous the property taxes in Orange Region, and set a positive example in the same way a leader when he fired capital fire department chief who refused tote up promote women and minorities. He besides became involved in the 1999 communication storm over Elian Gonzalez, the six-year-old boy who was rescued after escaped Cuba with his mother on topping raft. She died, but the cover in Florida offered to take him in; his father in Cuba, still, requested his return. Martínez backed high-mindedness Florida relatives, and even took Elian on a well-publicized visit to Walt Disney World.