Lifting weights helps melt years and miles of separation

By Lee Tolliver

The Virginian-Pilot

CHESAPEAKE

Andre DeCastro remembers the morning 12 years ago when he was abruptly jarred from a deep sleep.

"My dad woke me up and said we were going to meet my dad," DeCastro said. "I was like, 'I thought you were my dad.'... I didn't really understand what was going on."

As a 6-year-old, Andre DeCastro didn't know the man he thought of as his dad was his stepdad. He had no idea his biological father, Danny Transfiguracion, had been traveling the globe in search of his son.

DeCastro gets it now.

A relationship that started with a 2 a.m. visit from a "stranger" has grown into one of mutual respect and friendship, built around a shared interest in lifting weights.

Transfiguracion has won dozens of bench press competitions. DeCastro proved the apple doesn't fall far by winning his first competition - setting a world record for his age and weight class - in November's 100% Raw Powerlifting Federation's World Bench Press Championships in Norfolk.

His 364-pound lift broke the previous mark of 353.

The training and teaching have bonded the two. They say it's almost as if they never were apart.

Transfiguracion, 42, wasn't around when his son was born. He had lost contact with the boy's mother, but knew through mutual friends that he was a father.

At first he was OK with the separation but soon felt an overwhelming need to connect.

So six years after Andre's birth, dad set out on a search that took him to the Philippines and California.

The journey ended at a California military base. Transfiguracion had found his son. He didn't care that it was 2 in the morning.

"I had been longing so much to see him that I didn't care what time it was," Transfiguracion said. "I had spent a month in the Philippines looking for him when I found out he was in California. I went to one base and then the right one.

"It was just one of those things where I couldn't pinpoint where he was. But I knew I had to find him. He was my responsibility, and he was my son. The day I found him, well... it was a miracle."

Transfiguracion and DeCastro developed their relationship over time - writing letters and sending e-mails, talking on the phone. There were a few face-to-face visits.

But when DeCastro graduated from North Burlington High School in New Jersey and turned 18, he decided to move to Chesapeake to live with his dad, stepmother and 21-year-old stepsister.

"It's cool," DeCastro said. "I now know a lot of family I didn't know existed.

"My mom and stepdad are in Germany and I'll always keep in touch with that part of my family. But I've got twice the family I thought I did."

The guns give it away.

Dad and son both have rock hard physiques punctuated by massive arms.

DeCastro, who lifted weights during high school to help with football, baseball and track, always was strong.

"I had benched about 340 a few times," DeCastro said. "But I really didn't know what I was doing."

He has benefited greatly from his dad's mastery of the bench press.

Transfiguracion's loft above the garage is filled with trophies. In more than 20 years as a power lifter, he has two Philippine national titles and more than 75 overall victories to his

credit.

Dad has taught his son that there is more to bench pressing than strength.

"It's more technical than you might think, especially in competition," said Paul Bossi, president of the Raw federation and the wrestling coach at Currituck High School in northeastern North Carolina. "The bench is probably the easiest of the power lifts, but there's a lot to it. Danny knows his stuff and is the perfect person to be teaching someone.

"And he's got quite the student. His son is one heck of a specimen. That mark he broke was one heck of a record, and he shattered it."

Transfiguracion knows there are greater things to come. He has a video tape of his son benching 370 pounds a week before the Raw competition.

"He had all the power," Transfiguracion said of his 181-pound son. "That was in his genetics. Getting mentally prepared and focused was what we worked on. Technique, things like that.

"Honestly, I see him doing at least 450 by next year. He's that strong."

DeCastro, who sports 18-1/2-inch biceps, is enrolled in Tidewater Community College, but he wants to transfer to Old Dominion to study sports medicine.

He's considering the body-building world and has a pretty good head start.

But his quiet, humble attitude might not be suited for that testosterone-filled world.

"I don't know... it's kind of intimidating being in front of a lot of people," he said. "I was pretty pumped and focused at the lift competition. My adrenaline was really pumping.

"But body-building seems like something else."

When father and son aren't training, they like to relax in the room above the family house's garage. Aside from dad's trophies and plaques, a dart board hangs on one wall above a treadmill. There is a stereo and a desk.

But the focal point of the room is a large ping-pong table. The two play often.

"We started off with our bellies right at the ends of the table," Transfiguracion said. "But as we've gotten better, we've had to move back more and more until our backs are against the

wall.

"We're looking for a bigger room to set this thing up in."

When asked who's better, DeCastro looked at his dad and beamed an ear-to-ear smile.

"I lift more than him, and I hit it harder than him," DeCastro said jokingly. "I guess it's cause I'm bigger than him."

Lee Tolliver, (757) 222-5844, lee.tolliver@pilotonline.com