This series of interviews was conducted over a two-week period in November and December of 2002. We met each time in the apartment of Manuel Reis near Lake Merritt in Oakland. Unfortunately, Mr. Reis had slowed down considerably and was soon to pass away the following February at the age of 101. “If you had only talked to me last year,” he lamented at the time, “many things would have been clearer in my mind.” Nevertheless, in spite of their hesitancies and moments of confusion, these three sessions help to round out a portrait of a man who was intimately connected with various of the Portuguese American community organizations since shortly after his arrival from Lisbon in 1925. Most revealing of the personality of Manuel Reis, perhaps, was his singular and longheld desire to unite the people of Portuguese descent of northern California in one overarching organization, a dream repeatedly expressed here, but that ultimately would be frustrated.