By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 26, 2006; C01
Tony DeBenedittis is known around Herndon as a man with a big heart and a passion for life.
He taught art at Herndon High School for 30 years, worked with poor children in Honduras and spent time as a professional Santa Claus. He designed a new town seal, a compass with scenes from local history in each quadrant and the inscription: "In Our Past Lies The Hope of Our Future."
He is also patriarch of a family divided over the issue that has roiled the small town in western Fairfax County: illegal immigration. His son, Mayor Stephen J. DeBenedittis, was elected in May largely on his opposition to a day-laborer center established by the town to help immigrant workers find jobs. His daughter, Jennie Albers, is an outreach worker at the center.
Herndon's first family is hardly the only one to feel the ripples of the immigration debate at home. In a town of 23,000, the political can get deeply personal in a hurry. And in a town where 40 percent of the population is of Hispanic descent, it's likely that "nine of ten Hispanic families . . . has one or more illegal relatives somewhere in the vicinity," Salvadoran businessman Jorge Rochac told the Town Council in September.
Rochac, who ran unsuccessfully for council this year as a defender of the labor center and an advocate for bringing immigrants into the town's mainstream, has his own blood ties to the debate. His daughter, Fermina Rochac, works as a zoning inspector for the town, responsible for enforcing laws against crowding in homes where many immigrant workers live.
Rochac supports his daughter's work, although he laments that it has made her unpopular in the Latino community. "That's a tough job," he said. "Raising hell, writing fines, taking people to court."
Fermina Rochac declined several requests for an interview.
Tony DeBenedittis has nothing but praise for his children, but he is troubled by the tone of some of the community discussion, which has generated accusations of racism and xenophobia.
At a Sept. 26 council hearing led by his son, he appealed for compassion and mutual respect as the community struggled toward a solution.
He described some benches in the middle of town that had become a magnet for drinking, loitering and littering by Latino workers. When private owners removed the benches, the problem was gone. But so was an opportunity, DeBenedittis said.
"How much better would it have been if we had been able to explain to those loitering and littering in a compassionate way that that kind of behavior was unacceptable in our culture?" he asked.
What if, instead, residents had reached out "with a friendly smile and a handshake?"
Supporters of the Herndon Official Workers Center say it has brought some order to the town's day-labor market. Instead of milling in parking lots or on the streets in search of employers, workers have a place to go. Opponents, including Stephen DeBenedittis and four new council members, say it has made the town complicit in illegal activity by helping undocumented immigrants find work.
Since the election, Stephen DeBenedittis has led the council in enacting a series of measures to make the town less hospitable to illegal immigrants. At his direction, Herndon is searching for a new operator for the center to replace Reston Interfaith, the nonprofit group of local churches that employs his sister and that does not check the legal status of workers.
Neither the mayor nor Albers will discuss the situation.
"I'm not interested in doing a story about my family," Stephen DeBenedittis said. "I don't see how it benefits the town."
Albers said, "I'm not interested."
And although his son is, in essence, attempting to put his daughter out of business, Tony DeBenedittis said the issue has not created a serious rift in the family, which includes his wife, Mary, and two other adult children.
"Everybody gets along well," he said. "There's times when we talk about things and times when we don't."
But those in town who have known DeBenedittis for years say it can't be easy for him.
"I sense that he's very torn, with his kids taking different sides. I think he has feelings for both positions," said Richard Downer, a former Town Council member who calls Herndon "a microcosm of everybody's dissatisfaction" with national immigration policy.
"Tony is kind of in the middle," said former council member Carol Bruce, who supported the center and was unseated in the spring. "He believes the law should be upheld. On the other hand, it pains him to hear the language that has been thrown around."
What's clear is that DeBenedittis has raised a son and daughter who are walking distinctly different paths. A newcomer to politics, Stephen, 42, is soft-spoken and not completely comfortable in the spotlight. He was the family athlete, Tony said, a quiet kid with what Tony calls "a steely resolve." He studied marketing at Virginia Tech and, before marriage and family, entered bodybuilding competitions. He manages One To One Fitness Center in Tysons Corner.
Jennie is "more of a people person," Tony DeBenedittis said. She also worked in Honduras and the Dominican Republic for a Honduran organization that provides academic and spiritual education to poor children.
Several years ago in Estebania, a town about 90 minutes from the Dominican Republic capital, Santo Domingo, Jennie Albers and her husband, Tim, helped build housing for children from remote areas where they could live when they came to attend school.
"We feel the project is quite blessed -- Gracia a Dios!" she wrote in a letter home to family and friends in 2004.
Her work at the center, helping workers match their skills with potential employers' needs, is in the same spirit, friends say.
"She's a gem," said Bill Threlkeld, who manages the labor center for Reston Interfaith. He said her warm, easy relationships with the workers help build trust.
"I called her Mother Goose," said Rochac, who also worked at the center for a time. "There were always all these little ducklings around her that she was trying to help."
Tony DeBenedittis said life goes on as usual for his family, whose members all live close by. "We see each other on birthdays, that kind of thing," he said.
DeBenedittis also said he remains extremely proud of Stephen and Jennie and added that politics won't change that. "It isn't an issue for us," he said. "Folks struggle to make it an issue."
