Leading Lady Remembers

Mary Jane Martinez has led a life of firsts: She was a member of the charter class of the University of South Florida, her twin grandchildren were the first and second babies enrolled in Florida's prepaid tuition program, and she is the only person to have served as both first lady of Tampa and first lady of Florida.

Born in Tampa Heights in 1935, Maria "Mary Jane" Marino was the granddaughter of Italian immigrants. The Marinos left the Agrigento province of Sicily about 1900, seeking their fortune in Tampa. The family lived at 2304 Central Ave., and Mary Jane's father operated the Jefferson Street Market around the corner at Ross and Jefferson streets.

Mary Jane remembers all of her family members working at the grocery and sharing meals on the weekends.

"Sunday afternoons were special," Mary Jane remembered, fondly recalling the table groaning with "lots of meat, Italian sausage, a big salad and vegetables galore."

She remembers her father and grandfather preaching about the opportunities Tampa had afforded them.

"You live in a great country," she recalled them saying. "You can be anything you want to be, but you have to work hard."

A 1940s Schoolgirl

Hard work wasn't the only lesson taught at the family table.

"The main thing that my father and mother valued was education," Mary Jane recalled.

An older sister attended Florida State College for Women, today Florida State University, and Mary Jane remembers dedicated teachers at Lee Elementary and George Washington Junior High School in the 1940s.

She also recalls a ban on speaking Spanish at school. Spanish, not Italian or Sicilian dialect, was the lingua franca of most Latins of the era.

In 1950, while a student at Thomas Jefferson High School, Mary Jane Marino met "Bobby" Martinez. By destiny of their surnames, they sat together in home room.

They began dating in the summer of 1952, and he took her to Clearwater Beach in a 1934 Model A Ford. His father had removed the rumble seat to make room for fishing gear.

Bob Martinez was born on Christmas 1934. He recalls his grandmother getting up early on Sundays to prepare the traditional family meal: "baked chicken, pork, caldo Gallego soup." His grandmother died at age 103.

Bobby Martinez grew into a promising baseball player. He played semipro ball at Cuscaden Park, and the Brooklyn Dodgers offered him a $1,000 contract to be a catcher.

Instead, he decided to get married and attend college.

Bobby and Mary Jane were married in December 1954.

Borrowing his uncle's brand new car, a charcoal-and-peach 1955 Chevrolet, the newlyweds drove to Beulah's Cottages.

After the honeymoon, the young bride worked as a dental assistant while her husband finished classes at the University of Tampa.

Until USF opened its doors in 1960, the closest four-year public university available to Tampa Bay area students was in Gainesville.

When Bob interviewed for a teaching job at Oak Grove Junior High on Armenia Avenue in 1957, it was the northernmost secondary school in Hillsborough County.

In 1960, Mary Jane's close friend Diane Almeida proposed that the two enroll at USF.

At the time, the newly opened campus in the Tampa boondocks consisted of three buildings. Mary Jane majored in library science and English, and believes she may have been one of the first USF students to have a baby.

The Martinezes' first child, Alan, was born in 1961.

Bob cooked and helped type Mary Jane's term papers on a Royal manual typewriter.

Education And Activism

In 1962, Bob decided to pursue a graduate degree in labor and industrial relations at the University of Illinois. The couple loaded up their 1957 Chevrolet - with a baby and without a heater - and headed to Champaign, Ill. The family budget came to $25 a week.

The Martinezes returned to Tampa in 1964. Bob resumed his teaching career while Mary Jane finished her undergraduate degree.

In 1966, King High School principal Braulio Alonso hired Mary Jane as a librarian, a position she held for more than two decades. She helped form the National Honor Society.

She also fondly remembers one of King's alumni, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio.

The unrest of 1968 did not spare Tampa or the Martinez family. As executive director of the Hillsborough County Teachers Association, Bob led county educators in a tumultuous strike.

One of the rank-and-file strikers was Mary Jane Martinez.

Cooking Up A New Career

In 1975, Bob purchased Cafe Sevilla, a Spanish restaurant in West Tampa. He admittedly knew nothing about the food business, but his father, Serafin, was a legendary waiter at the Columbia. Mary Jane remained at King High but helped as a cashier on Friday nights and kept the books.

Cafe Sevilla became a great meeting place for businessmen and politicians.

"The very month that I took over the restaurant, I got a call from Gov. Reubin Askew," Bob recalls. The governor wanted him to serve on the board of the Southwest Florida Water Management District.

It wasn't Bob's first encounter with politics - he had run for Tampa mayor in 1974 and finished third. But he credits Askew with jump-starting his political career: "That's how I got started in politics."

In 1978, the late J. Clint Brown, a prominent lawyer, proposed that Bob run again for mayor of Tampa. After several meetings, Bob announced his candidacy. He raised a record $150,000 before the election in September 1979 and won handily, defeating Bob Bondi to become the first non-Italian Latin to be elected mayor of Tampa. Nick Nuccio and Dick Greco, who preceded Bob in office, were both of Italian descent.

When Bob took the oath of office in 1980, the couple's children were in high school and college.

"When Bob was mayor, we tried to keep Sundays to ourselves," Mary Jane said.

She has bittersweet memories of the 1982 defeat of "A Penny for the Good Life," a referendum to finance a performing arts center. "You have to have thick skin and a sense of humor in politics," she said.

In the spring of 1983, Bob and Mary Jane received a fateful call: President Ronald Reagan invited them to the White House.

In Part II, coming Feb. 22: To the governor's mansion and beyond.