The images are burned into the minds of most Americans: immigrants sneaking across the border and being rounded up in raids by federal agents. And then there is the angry politician demanding that something be done. But immigrants have played a huge role in making Orlando. Few realize that one of the oldest buildings in downtown Orlando, the Rogers Building on Magnolia and Pine, was once a club for British immigrants. Or that people from Scandinavia came here in the late 1800s to help Henry Sanford plant orange trees.

Today, immigrants come to Orlando from all over the world. And many have been major contributors to the city’s growth. We looked at some people who have become leading players in Orlando and asked them to tell their stories of coming to America.

Mel Martinez
It has been a remarkable political story. First elected to political office less than a dozen years ago, he has moved from county office to presidential cabinet to positions as a United States senator and chairman of the Republican National Committee. But it has one strange twist: Mel Martinez cannot go higher. While his fellow senators such as Hillary Clinton and John McCain launch presidential bids, Martinez is the only sitting senator who cannot become president. That is because of a provision in the Constitution that says all presidents must be native born.

Melquiades Rafael Martinez was born in Sagua La Grande, Cuba. His father was a veterinarian and the family lived a middle-class life until Martinez was a teenager. When Fidel Castro came to power, his life changed. When it became apparent that Castro was a communist dictator, Martinez became involved in the underground movement in Cuba, placing his life in jeopardy. His parents signed him up for Operation Peter Pan, a movement by the Catholic Church to take youngsters from Cuba to the United States. It meant leaving his family behind. He first was placed in a camp in Miami and later moved to Jacksonville. Four months later, Martinez and 11 other children were taken by bus to Orlando to live with families they had never met. His brother and sister came later. Although the original plan called for Mel's parents to follow soon, it took them four years to get out of Cuba.
Martinez went to Florida State University, where he planned to become a doctor. But his interest in Cuba led him to study international relations and go to law school.

Martinez met George W. Bush in 2000 while Bush was running for president and Martinez was Orange County commission chairman. He was as surprised as anyone when Bush named him to his cabinet as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. There were two more prominent Republicans in Orlando, Mayor Glenda Hood and Toni Jennings, who seemed more likely to get a top spot in the new administration.

Bush and Martinez became friends. In 2004, Martinez was elected to the Senate. And after the Republican disaster in the 2006 elections, Bush turned to Martinez to take over as chairman of the Republican National Committee. But in October, Martinez announced that he was giving up the post. His biggest problem is that Martinez is at odds with the majority of his party over the issue of immigration. Martinez, who as a young boy had seen the nation's doors swing open to welcome him and his family, favors a more lenient immigration policy than his own party. Maybe that’s not so surprising.

Tess Wise
Tess Wise remembers how the terror progressed.

On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland, her homeland. Within two weeks, the Nazis owned the government, then the businesses. Then they took control of Poland’s Jewish population, first restricting their movement, then forcing them into the ghettoes and ultimately deporting them to the concentration camps. Although she managed to escape a slave labor camp and live in a community where she passed as a gentile, in the six years before the war ended Tess Wise witnessed the horrors of several lifetimes. But even after the Soviets liberated Poland, the persecution didn’t end. When the Poles themselves initiated a pogrom of random killings and beatings, the remnants of her family fled to Germany where Allied forces offered protection. But in the end, only America could provide a real sense of safety.“ That this was a wide open, freedom-loving country was very easily perceived,” says Wise, 82. “The biggest impression on me was how great were our opportunities. We had a supportive community, the gift of luck and the opportunity to make of our lives what we wanted.” And what Tess Wise wanted most of all was for people to remember. Even though she had lectured on the Holocaust at Central Florida’s public schools and local colleges and universities, she needed to do more. In the early 1980s, with her husband Abe she founded the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Educational Center in Maitland. More recently, the Wises endowed a professorship in Judaic Studies at UCF. They also helped develop university courses in Krakow and Warsaw where teachers will learn how to present Holocaust studies. It has been her life’s work to “preserve the past to protect the future.” The act of giving. It’s an obligation Wise takes seriously.“ I think all of us, for the privileges we have enjoyed and the opportunities that we were given, we owe it to society to give back whatever’s the best in us.”

Daniel Gutierrez
There weren’t many opportunities in the Mexican mining village of Mineral del Cubo—especially not for Daniel Gutierrez. There were seven kids in the family, and his father was barely eking out a living as a butcher. It was clear that an opportunity needed to be created, and it would be up to Daniel’s mother to do it. Despite the fact that she had only completed a year or two of school, she knew enough to take her seven children in search of a new life in Mexico City.“ There was no future in the village,” recalls Gutierrez, now 53. “The girls only stayed in school for a few years, and the boys would start working in the mines when they were as young as 12.”

In Mexico City, as Daniel watched his mother working 11 hour days, seven days a week, he developed a similar work ethic. He graduated high school and entered junior college, where a professor helped him land a job as a draftsman at the Corona beer company. There his own initiative and assistance from mentors earned him supervisory positions. Next, he became chief engineer at a glass factory and then, on a whim, interviewed for a job at an Acapulco hotel. He was hired that day.
More hotels would follow. He worked in Aruba and then Jamaica, all the while picturing himself back home in Mexico. Then, in 1983, his general manager told him he was needed in Orlando. “I really just came here for a vacation,” admits Gutierrez. “But now it’s 24 years later and I’m not going anywhere.”
Why should he? As vice-president of engineering and facilities management, he oversees all engineering projects at all Rosen properties.

A citizen since 1997, Gutierrez is still amazed when he looks back on his journey.“ When I was in junior college, I grew up with some resentments about America. In Latin America, capitalism is looked upon as a bad thing and you hear that America is not a good place to be. But when I came here, I realized I had been misinformed, big time.“ Now when I return here from a trip to Mexico, I feel like I am coming back home. I am an American.”

Henri Landwirth
At 13, Henri Landwirth, the son of Max and Fanny Landwirth, became known as B4343.
His tattooed identity was for Nazi officials, and it marked him at Plaszow and at Ostrowitz and then at Auschwitz and subsequent concentration and slave labor camps. But not even concentration camps would prove as powerful as the three miracles that saved Henri Landwirth from certain death. A mysterious stranger shared a life-saving pill and he survived a potentially fatal bout of typhus; his skull was crushed by the heavy blow of a rifle butt, but he awoke from his coma; his third rendezvous with death was postponed when he met a merciful firing squad.

Of the countless miracles that would follow, perhaps the greatest of these was the day 19-year-old Henri Landwirth arrived in America. Both his parents were dead, and all he had was a sixth grade education and just $20 from his cousin Kitty.“ I was in New York without the English language, without any money, without nobody to go to,” he recalls. “It’s a very difficult time. You don’t think about anything but survival. I slept through breakfast when I got to New York. I didn’t have money for breakfast. That’s how poor I was. You don’t think about goals when you’re hungry. You don’t think about anything.”

But fate had a way of thinking for Landwirth. First working as a diamond cutter, he was drafted into the army and, following an honorable discharge, returned to New York where entry-level hotel work was the equalizer for his lack of education.

A Miami Beach honeymoon brought him to Florida, where he worked his way up to the position of assistant manager at the President Madison Hotel. It was there he became acquainted with Mr. B.G. Mc-Nabb, a regular guest who, as luck would have it, was the general manager of General Dynamics’ ICBM division. It was Mr. McNabb’s task to commission a hotel in Cocoa Beach for the military brass and media and astronauts arriving with the advent of the space program. It was also Mr. McNabb’s demand that the manager of the Starlight Motel be Henri Landwirth. Connections followed. He became friends with Walter Cronkite and business partners with astronaut John Glenn. He bought several Holiday Inns, amassed wealth and, at 59, realized he had at last achieved financial security. Recognizing he had missed his own childhood, in 1986 Landwirth started Give Kids The World which, in 1989, expanded to include Kissimmee’s Give Kids The World Village, which continues to provide terminally ill children and their families all-expenses- paid Orlando vacations.

As a man who understands miracles, Landwirth is constantly amazed at the success of his life—and his village.“ God is in that village,” he insists. “There are miracles there every single day. Truly. We have never turned down a child, and aside from the land there are no contracts—everything is done on a handshake. And we have 5,000 volunteer angels there, which provides seniors a second life by offering them a chance to give.”

Landwirth is also proud of Dignity U Wear, his Jacksonville-based charity that now, thanks to contributions by Stein Mart and others, has amassed $27 million in brand new clothing and merchandise to give to families and children in a gesture that builds hope and self-esteem.

Tony Rey Sr.
Act One. On a small boat drifting between the Cuban mainland and its barrier islands, 16-year-old Tony Rey hides below deck. In the early morning darkness, he hears another boat approaching, boot heels clacking on the deck above and the sound of guns being cocked.

Act Two, six years later. After enduring two years of prison, Tony Rey’s dreams of a medical career and a lifetime of free thought have been blocked by a government that asserts, “There are no rights, only obligations, in the Revolution.” Now he is once again on a small boat adrift in the waters off Cuba. This time, however, the scene concludes not with guns and Castro’s goons, but with a seagoing rumrunner who conveys Rey and his fellow refugees to freedom. At 22, Tony Rey begins a new life in Orlando.“ If there was only one thing I would have done differently, I would have been born in the United States,” jokes Rey, now 60. It has been nearly 40 years since he arrived in America, and in that time he has risen from a position as a sawdust sweeper at Walt Disney World to his current role as CEO and president of one of Orlando’s leading homebuilders, the Rey Group, a $36-million-per-year company.

Discussing the past—the privileged childhood interrupted by Castro’s “confiscation” of the family farms, the beatings, the fear, the driving desire for a new life, the miracle at sea—triggers emotions that are still close to the surface. But he composes himself as he recounts the single reason why he was determined to reach America.“ I knew I would die before I’d let people tell me what to study and what to do and what to think.”

Thuong Nguyen (Cuc) Foshee
It was a natural decision made by a determined little girl: when she grew up, she would become a lawyer. But reality has a way of derailing dreams.

When Vietnam split in 1954, her family fled their farm on the outskirts of Hanoi and moved to Nha-trang in South Vietnam. The move put her on the path to meet and then marry Special Forces Sergeant-Major Edgar Foshee in 1969. It would be another three years before they would come to America and settle in Orlando. In preparation, Foshee thumbed through American magazines and catalogues and marveled at pictures of the nation’s highways and bridges and tall buildings. As far as she was concerned, that was America. Then she landed at Orlando’s rural McCoy Airport.
“ We drove to our house in Conway, passing all of these empty fields,” Foshee recalls. “There were no high-rise hotels. No big highways. I was totally disappointed.”

Matching Orlando’s lack of skyscrapers was her own lack of confidence. With her limited English, she was scared to make friends. She wasn’t ready to learn to drive. She learned that two boxes of checks didn’t mean she was entitled to two boxes of money. Time helped her learn other lessons. The most important lesson was that she could make a difference.

In 1975, as she offered her services as an interpreter, a guide and a friend to newly arriving Vietnamese refugees, she developed confidence. With encouragement and guidance from her husband, she opened T.N. Grassing, Inc., a landscaping firm that now employs a dozen people and enjoys a host of commercial contracts—including the grandchild of the old McCoy Airport, the Orlando International Airport.

Thirty-five years after she arrived in America, Vietnam is still tied to her life. On a 2005 trip to her homeland, she was arrested and imprisoned for 14 months in a Ho Chi Minh City detention center until a worldwide drive undertaken by friends, family and government officials helped effect her release.“ There was no evidence,” Foshee explains. “But the reason they kept me was my fight for democracy and freedom and my desire to help people.”

The flight from North Vietnam, the collapse of South Vietnam, the recent arrest—her difficult past prompts Foshee to offer this hard-earned advice: “For Americans to understand how good they have it, they should take a trip to a place where people suffer. Vietnam or Thailand or Africa. Then they will have the perspective of everything America hands them.”

Rafael ‘Ralph’ Martinez
Certain memories stick with Ralph Martinez. On May 12, 1962, he arrived in Miami at 11 a.m. on American flight #422. It’s an indelible image. Yet for more than 40 years, he couldn’t remember what had happened only hours before flight #422 landed. It was a memory buried safely in the past. Then he saw The Lost City, the Andy Garcia film about the dawn of Castro’s Cuba. One scene caught his attention: the scene where a child at the airport was being strip-searched.“ That’s when I realized it had really happened to me,” Martinez says. “It was true. They had stripped me down at the airport looking for hidden money and jewelry. It doesn’t seem like I lived through it. Did that really happen? Some of it still seems like a dream.” Or a nightmare. Like the time he was taken at gunpoint from his 6th grade class and interrogated at secret police headquarters for refusing to swallow an experimental polio vaccine. Or when he was forced to run a gauntlet of verbal and physical abuse just to enter a church. But he had made it to Miami. Released to live with an aunt and uncle there, he hung out with the American kids and worked hard to learn English. When his parents arrived four years later, the entire family was reunited with his brother Mel in Orlando. New neighbors donated furniture, kitchenware and a washing machine to help them get started. His father, a veterinarian, was given a job at T.G. Lee Dairies. Welcome to America.

He can look back now on the traumatic moments from his childhood and see that they made him stronger. He completed college and became a founding partner in the law firm of McEwan, Martinez, and Dukes, P.A. In 2002, he even had the privilege of challenging the Cuban delegation on their human rights record at the United Nations General Assembly.

His success makes him appreciate America all the more.“ I’ve seen what it’s like to lose your freedom,” he says. “When you have to walk past machine guns to go to church. When you don’t have the right to choose your leaders. When mock military courts put teenagers before the firing squad.
“ I’ve lived through that.”