Regional Oral History Office University of California the Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

José do Couto Rodrigues: An Oral History

Interviews conducted by Don Warrin in 2013

Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable.

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All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and José do Couto Rodrigues dated August 3, 2013. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpts up to 1000 words from this interview may be quoted for publication without seeking permission as long as the use is non-commercial and properly cited.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to The Bancroft Library, Head of Public Services, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should follow instructions available online at http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/collections/cite.html

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

José do Couto Rodrigues “José do Couto Rodrigues: An Oral History” conducted by Don Warrin in 2013, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2013.

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José do Couto Rodrigues, 2013

José do Couto Rodrigues

José and I spoke in two sessions in May of 2013. He talked about his upbringing on the island of São Miguel, Azores, about his parents, and his father’s long absence in Bermuda before he was born. We discussed his education both on the island and later in California, where he obtained an MBA from San Francisco State while also taking on a leadership role in more than one campus- wide organization. He later married and entered into upper-management at Hertz and National Car Rental, before working for the environmental Green Team of San Jose. He also talked about his extensive work in Portuguese radio in California. Our second session was dedicated mainly to a discussion of his many community activities, including his work with the Portuguese Athletic Club and Portuguese Heritage Publications.

Don Warrin, Berkeley, 2013 v

Table of Contents−José Rodrigues

Interview 1: May 8, 2013

[Audiofile 1] 1

He discusses his origins on the island of São Miguel, Azores − His father’s long absence in Bermuda and the effect on the family − Difficulties of Azoreans in Bermuda − Father’s return and various agricultural enterprises − José’s education on the island − Emigration to California − His continuing education, including various activities at San Francisco State

[Audiofile 2] 24

Leadership roles of the Associated Students and International Students Association at the university − MBA − Marriage − Management experience at Hertz and National Car Rental − Then the environmental Green Team of San Jose − More discussion of growing up on the island

Interview 2: May 23, 2013

[Audiofile 3] 46

We talk about his various community activities − PAPA (Portuguese American Political Action − Cabrillo Savings Bank − IDES, San Rafael − Portuguese Athletic Club − Portuguese Heritage Publications − CASE (Catholic Association for Seminary Education) − City Year of San Jose − Green Team − Giaretto Institute

Interview #1 May 8, 2013 Begin Audio File 1 Rodrigues_José_01_05-08-13_stereo.mp3

01-00:00:14 Warrin: So here we are in the home of José Rodrigues in San Mateo. It is today, May—

01-00:00:41 Rodrigues: Eighth.

01-00:00:43 Warrin: May 8. And this is Don Warrin and ready to start our interview. José, if you could give me your full name and date of birth.

01-00:00:58 Rodrigues: José do Couto Rodrigues. January 2, 1944.

01-00:01:04 Warrin: And whereabouts were you born?

01-00:01:06 Rodrigues: I was born in the town of Lomba da Maia, São Miguel, Azores.

01-00:01:19 Warrin: And could you tell me something about your parents?

01-00:01:26 Rodrigues: My parents were both natives of the same town and from a very large family in town. My father from the Cordeiro family, which is almost half the village. My mother from the Clementino side, which a very interesting name, Clementino, which is only found in the village of Lomba da Maia. There’s no other place in any islands anywhere. I’ve researched but I can’t figure out how it started and I went all the way back to the 1800s. They married, they had four children. When my oldest brother was born, about that time my father emigrated to Bermuda on a labor contract. At that time was very common, immigration. Where he was in Bermuda for thirteen years. From 1930 to 1943, then he returned home and bought a lot of land and then he made the living.

01-00:02:25 Warrin: And he was there alone?

01-00:02:28 Rodrigues: Alone. Absolutely.

01-00:02:30 Warrin: And so your older brother would have been a lot older than you.

01-00:02:33 Rodrigues: He’s thirteen years older. Yeah, thirteen years older than me.

01-00:02:36 Warrin: And you were the second son?

01-00:02:38 Rodrigues: I am the new wave. The first of the new wave.

01-00:02:42 Warrin: I see. And what was life like for your mother during those years?

01-00:02:48 Rodrigues: Very difficult as a woman with a child. She moved into her parents home, which at that time were getting also up in age. And so my brother was raised with my grandfather. And my father did not come home for thirteen years. And I asked him a question one time, “Why?” because I knew other people that done it. [phone ringing] I’m sorry. Let me see if I can mute this. I’ll do it right. I think I got it. I said, “You know, all that time away from home.” And he said, “Because wages were so low that if you had to pay the ship to come and go, and was not a day ship, you would spend all your savings coming.” And his brother was one of the other people that did that. And it was funny because—funny in a way of saying—is that my father, after thirteen years, had committed enough savings and land where he was an independent man and had a very decent home and provided education for his children, while the people that were with him, most of them did not because the money was spent—

01-00:04:06 Warrin: Going back and forth?

01-00:04:07 Rodrigues: —going back and forth. Yeah.

01-00:04:11 Warrin: And how did that affect your parents’ relationship? He was gone for thirteen years. That’s an awful long time.

01-00:04:18 Rodrigues: It affected. It affected my oldest brother more than my parents because he was raised until thirteen years old without knowing my father at all. It affected my mother in a different way, even though I never detected any animosity between them. But she became very much of a partner because when he was there she would be the one buying the land, the pieces of land. She was the businessperson in the island, he was the earner in the labor contract in Bermuda. So he became—

01-00:04:56 Warrin: So she was taking on the role of both parents and also the business aspect, as well?

01-00:05:06 Rodrigues: Correct.

01-00:05:07 Warrin: I know I’ve seen that in my research in the West on the ranches, where the woman often takes on that sort of role of businessperson, running not only the household but part of the business. Sometimes they’re better educated. I don’t know in your—

01-00:05:28 Rodrigues: That was also true because my dad never went to school. My dad started working at eleven years old in the place that now is famous for the tea plantation, Gorreana in São Miguel. They were cutting down the wood and at that age, when they fell the logs, his job was to take the small branches out. So he walked every day from Lomba da Maia there, which is probably about twelve kilometers, to earn a little wage. My dad did not have shoes until he was eighteen.

01-00:06:02 Warrin: I was just going to ask that.

01-00:06:04 Rodrigues: So he never went one day to school. Neither did all his brothers. And my mother went to school for a while but in those days, there was still that thing of girls don’t have to learn as much as men if they went, and so there was not a lot of push. And everybody lived off the land, so there was not opportunities coming their way.

01-00:06:25 Warrin: Yeah. And what did your father do in Bermuda?

01-00:06:31 Rodrigues: My father went on the labor contract to work as a gardener in a hotel. And I think he worked in that job for about a year and a half, and then him and another fellow from Lomba da Maia started a quarry business. My understanding in Bermuda is at that time to build the houses, people would quarry the local rock, which is a softer rock, that it’s sewn. So being the typical immigrant, not afraid of work, they got together, they would buy the quarry and then they would cut down the slabs to whatever specifications the contractors wanted. And so my father did that typical immigrant life. Seven days a week, twelve hour days. I remember as a kid when he came back, because the saw was huge to go into the rock and it was one man because it had to go in. My father’s shoulders were—you thought he had been boxing. And his hands, even when he was an older man, ninety—he was ninety when he died, but in the seventies, if he grabbed me like this I could drag him but there was no go because his hands were huge because that’s what he did for almost eleven years.

01-00:07:54 Warrin: Just manual labor.

01-00:07:55 Rodrigues: Manual labor every day.

01-00:07:56 Warrin: And if he didn’t know how to read and write, how did he communicate over those years in his absence?

01-00:08:08 Rodrigues: He would have people write and people read the letters.

01-00:08:12 Warrin: And how often was there intercommunication?

01-00:08:18 Rodrigues: It was often for that time. And when I say often for that time, it probably would be a couple months at a time because you had to wait for the ship to come to the Azores and deliver the letter whenever the old rigmarole would come. But I know it was often because my mom would write and say, “Such a piece of land is up for sale, this is where it is,” and he would have to answer, “That’s a good idea.” So they had some communication going. But it would have to be through a second party.

01-00:08:51 Warrin: And what were their names?

01-00:08:55 Rodrigues: My father was José, a very uncommon name (!). And—José Bento Rodrigues Cordeiro, and my mother was Albina.

01-00:09:06 Warrin: And what about your siblings?

01-00:09:10 Rodrigues: My oldest brother, his name is Bento. My father came back. My father loved the land, dirt farming rather than dairy. But my brother wanted dairy so he set up a little dairy, Azores style, for him. But when he became about nineteen, my brother wanted to emigrate. So he was one of the first wave of immigrants from the Azores to Canada in 1955, I think was the year.

01-00:09:45 Warrin: There was a big movement to Canada, partly—I’ve spoken with Carlos Almeida about that. Because he was a coordinator to get immigrants to work on the transcontinental railroad.

01-00:09:59 Rodrigues: Correct. He didn’t work on the railroad. My brother ended up going to a farm. And then he went to the city of Kingston in province of Ontario, worked on a farm and then worked his way around, and then tied in with another guy from Lomba da Maia. They started a restaurant and then they broke apart. Then he got another restaurant with a Greek and they stayed in that town.

Then when I was eighteen and I was the one that emigrated with a student visa, at that time coming to California. I had met an uncle I had here. Because

I wanted to take electronic engineering, which was something that was not in Portugal yet. And I was also eighteen. And then my brother after me was seventeen when he emigrated to Canada and then the youngest one is the one that didn’t. And that was something that my father did not take well because he had done the emigration, he had seen the hard labor, the difficulties, and of course, his difficulties were much more than mine due to the limitations of language and other things. And so having his sons emigrate, it was not something that he looked very favorably. However, he did not put any constraints to him.

01-00:11:23 Warrin: Yeah, that was good. I can imagine that those years in Bermuda, and buying land, he was hoping to provide for his wife and sons for another generation or two.

01-00:11:39 Rodrigues: Correct. To stay, yeah. And, of course, at that time in Bermuda, and you probably found out from your research, too, is these labor contracts, you couldn’t stay. He was on a visa, temporary, whatever they call it, and you couldn’t bring wives. And there were even limitations on what you could buy. And then Bermuda has all kind of rules about foreigners buying land and what they could buy.

01-00:12:06 Warrin: So it was more limitation in Bermuda than if he had emigrated to Canada?

01-00:12:09 Rodrigues: Oh, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. Even though Bermuda has a huge Portuguese population, mostly from São Miguel. And I know some of them. But there was a lot of limitations on what you can and cannot do in Bermuda. Yeah.

01-00:12:28 Warrin: Yeah. I haven’t studied that much. It’s an interesting topic that I don’t think’s been written about much at all.

01-00:12:34 Rodrigues: No, no. I think like one-third of the population of Bermuda is Portuguese.

01-00:12:43 Warrin: Is that right?

01-00:12:44 Rodrigues: Yeah. It’s huge. But in typical fashion, and forget my bitterness here, is that somehow the government of Portugal and the Azores is a little better, they are unable to think past the border. And like Bermuda has no Portuguese consulate.

01-00:13:12 Warrin: Really?

01-00:13:12 Rodrigues: Yeah. They have to go to Boston.

01-00:13:15 Warrin: Well, that’s amazing. Is that because of the British government or—

01-00:13:21 Rodrigues: No, no, no. It’s part of the Portuguese—I’ll sit back. It’s part of the Portuguese, the big saving plan that they go on so they can blow it on something else, like submarines. So can you imagine an island in the middle—I’m not in the middle but an hour’s flight. I think it’s an hour’s flight from Boston and there’s no Portuguese consulate.

01-00:13:45 Warrin: Now, that’s amazing because there’s no relationship between Boston and Bermuda, either political or geographic whatsoever.

01-00:13:56 Rodrigues: No, no. Just the flights. Because there’s often flights because there’s a lot of tourists. But from that point of view, there’s none.

01-00:14:04 Warrin: Okay. Probably be better having a consulate in Miami or somewhere.

01-00:14:09 Rodrigues: Well, they could have used an honorary. There’s all kinds of ways to go around this thing.

01-00:14:16 Warrin: And so that leads to a lot less protection of these immigrants—

01-00:14:24 Rodrigues: Correct.

01-00:00:00 Warrin: —if they have to deal with the US and Boston.

01-00:14:29 Rodrigues: Less protection for them, even though the number of immigrants now coming from the Azores on contract is very limited. Bermuda over the years has switched more to Caribbean labor. But on the other hand, in addition to that, the lack of a constant presence has not provided the impetus for the Portuguese cultural organizations to keep growing and having a tie-in. Like the biggest social club in Bermuda is Vasco da Gama, which was founded— one of the founders was one of my cousins, who was in Bermuda just at the time with my dad.

01-00:15:21 Warrin: Really?

01-00:15:23 Rodrigues: He was the first treasurer.

01-00:15:25 Warrin: And what is the status of Portuguese in Bermuda? The social status?

01-00:15:38 Rodrigues: I think that now it’s a little better but obviously they came in as the servants and so they have that stigma for a long time as the people that were serving. They did not read or write or knew very little, and the language limitations. But now has grown and I think that even people in the government, the parliament, there’s a huge number of Portuguese now. Because now they’re natives. They’re the natives now. The Jamaicans now in the Caribbean are the new imports.

01-00:16:19 Warrin: Are the new immigrants.

01-00:16:20 Rodrigues: Yeah, yeah. The new bottom.

01-00:16:22 Warrin: That’s interesting. And why, after thirteen years, did your father return?

01-00:16:30 Rodrigues: He actually told me one time that he wanted to come a little earlier but the war had started. And there was a whole thing going in the middle of the Atlantic. And he kept waiting, he kept waiting, and then he got to a point so bad. He didn’t know if it was going to end. Like nobody did. And he got in a ship. And all he remembers that the ship came across the Atlantic with the lights off because that was the—and to be in a convoy and all that, I think at the time. But he wanted to go home. But he was coming in one way because he never told me that he was trying to go back.

01-00:17:13 Warrin: To Bermuda?

01-00:17:15 Rodrigues: Yeah, to Bermuda.

01-00:17:16 Warrin: Yeah. I would imagine if he dared to travel in the mid-Atlantic during the war, that he didn’t plan to make a round trip.

01-00:17:26 Rodrigues: Yeah, yeah. Because didn’t know how long it’s going to last. There was also a very large presence, American armed forces, in the Bermuda area.

01-00:17:40 Warrin: And there were around the Azores, too.

01-00:17:42 Rodrigues: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

01-00:17:44 Warrin: So then he returned and had three more children?

01-00:17:51 Rodrigues: Correct. All boys.

01-00:17:53 Warrin: Oh, all boys.

01-00:17:54 Rodrigues: All boys.

01-00:17:55 Warrin: What are their names?

01-00:17:57 Rodrigues: There was—

01-00:17:57 Warrin: You’ve mentioned some already.

01-00:17:59 Rodrigues: There was Bento, the oldest one. That was before he left, and I was the first one, José. And then António and then Guilherme.

01-00:18:05 Warrin: And what happened to your two younger brothers?

01-00:18:09 Rodrigues: Yeah. The one just below me, when he was like eighteen, he emigrated to Canada, went to my oldest brother, and he stayed there. Became a bricklayer. Just retired. And bought a farm in Canada. This was the one that really always wanted to have cows. My brother was animal man. And today, in that harsh weather—in fact, I was on the phone yesterday with him—right now he has almost a hundred head of cattle and because of the harsh weather you have to put them inside. Except this year they have had a tremendously great spring.

01-00:18:52 Warrin: Whereabouts is this?

01-00:18:53 Rodrigues: It’s in the little town of Odessa, founded by Russians from that area, in a suburb of Kingston off the Lake Ontario. It’s exactly halfway between Toronto and Montreal.

01-00:19:09 Warrin: And it’s in Ontario?

01-00:19:10 Rodrigues: Yeah. And so he has about 300 acres and cuts his own alfalfa and does his whole thing and he’s happy as a hog. Has the horses and the country farm. That’s it. The youngest one is the one that lives still back in Portugal. Has three children. And that one never emigrated.

01-00:19:29 Warrin: And he lives in São Miguel?

01-00:19:32 Rodrigues: São Miguel.

01-00:19:33 Warrin: And took over the family property?

01-00:19:35 Rodrigues: He did but couldn’t manage it as well as my dad, so end up becoming a truck driver. Yeah. My dad, even though he could not read or write, I can say that the time that I was taking my graduate degree and I met all kinds of smart people, very smart people, I never met anybody smarter than him. My dad was a keen person. Just didn’t have all the tools that education would have given him. But he came to Lomba da Maia after those years in Bermuda and he was able to set up his life, that his home was well developed. They had the dairy, had the land. My father became a man that you could borrow money from. I remember when the big emigration to Canada in the fifties. In those days, and probably true in every country, the banks don’t lend money to anybody that needs it. It’s the people that really don’t need it, they can have all the money they want. And people coming to Canada at those times, it was almost—it’s a lot of money. And my dad was normal bank. People would come. At that time it was like um conto de reis [1,000 reis (Portuguese currency)], which doesn’t sound like a lot of money today. Today it’s probably 200 euros or whatever it is. But at that time it’s equivalent to two cows. But people needed to get all the paperwork done and then the travel to Canada and that they would borrow. Everybody paid back.

01-00:21:31 Warrin: So he would loan them the money for the process and for the voyage.

01-00:21:37 Rodrigues: For their fare.

01-00:21:38 Warrin: And then when they got settled in Canada, then they would—

01-00:21:43 Rodrigues: They would send him some money.

01-00:21:43 Warrin: —pay him back.

01-00:21:44 Rodrigues: They would pay him back. And, of course, at those times there was no interest. Most of the men were men that worked for us, because we had a large crew of men that worked for us in the land.

01-00:22:00 Warrin: You say worked for us. What was that like, the ranch at that time?

01-00:22:09 Rodrigues: The part of the dairy, typically of the island, it was up in the higher land, on the part of the mountain. Not the very good land, you might say. And this was land that had been cleared up of the local brush, like urze [heather] and all that, and planted. Now, in those days, because there was no machine, all of them were done by hoe. So the fields were not very flat. They’re rounded up. Wherever the land went they had to go with it. And my dad had the dairy for my brother, which never was more than twenty cows, which was all a man can milk, anyway. And that was it. And then my dad had the third farm, and it was in pieces of land everywhere. My house was in the middle of the town. It was a very large house, which has since been demolished. As a matter of fact, in my house, part of the house used to be a grocery store. An uncle of mine used to have a grocery store, which then became our dining room. That was a huge dining room. And then my dad then concentrated on the land and his thing was like potatoes and growing potatoes. That was his favorite crop. That area, Lomba da Maia, is very good for that. And wheat and all kinds of stuff. But that’s what he liked, was the dirt farming.

01-00:23:40 Warrin: And he would sell it all locally?

01-00:23:42 Rodrigues: Yes. The potatoes and all that. Most of them, because it was such good quality, there was a guy that would buy it. And he had a contract for the airbase in Terceira and a lot of them was selected by hand and was used for seeding for other islands because they don’t want to use the same all the time. So we would export, as we would say it, from one island to the other for that. The wheat and all that were taken. There was a government co-op that you turn it in, and the corn.

01-00:24:22 Warrin: So there was external commerce to the extent that you were sending products to other islands anyway?

01-00:24:31 Rodrigues: Yes. Yeah, there was.

01-00:24:33 Warrin: Maybe the base needed it. The US Air Force base there.

01-00:24:40 Rodrigues: Yes, in Terceira. Yeah, they bought mostly local stuff. So the potatoes, a lot of them end up there. And then the cattle was exported to the mainland. There’s a lot of cattle exported to the mainland in those days.

01-00:24:52 Warrin: So he would actually raise cattle and sell cattle.

01-00:24:57 Rodrigues: Correct.

01-00:24:58 Warrin: Even though they weren’t dairy cattle?

01-00:25:00 Rodrigues: They were.

01-00:25:01 Warrin: They were dairy cattle.

01-00:25:02 Rodrigues: They were dairy cattle. Yes, they were dairy.

01-00:25:05 Warrin: So when did you decide that you wanted an education?

01-00:25:13 Rodrigues: Actually, it was a strange thing. It was very young in my life, and very unusual circumstances. Across from my house there was a family that had a little store and one of the daughters in the larger room used to tutor. And when I was five years old, because I was hanging around looking at what they were doing or trying to read, whatever, my mother got me into that tutoring. So I started my first grade at five. Then when I was six years old, the local teacher, which then came to California and I knew him over here because in Portugal you went to school at seven. Told my mom, Albina, “I have extra space so why don’t you send José to school at six?” So I started school at six.

01-00:26:19 Warrin: Where was the school?

01-00:26:22 Rodrigues: In Lomba da Maia. The first four grades at that time were done locally and then with the fifth grade, or primeiro ano do liceu [first year of high school] as they will call it, then you would have to go to Ponta Delgada. Then I moved when I was eleven years old. And that shows you the lack of sophistication that we have locally. When I finished fourth grade, instead of going right to liceu, they convinced me that I should go on with a local teacher, preparation for the exam, the admission exam to liceu. So I wasted that year that I shouldn’t have wasted. So I went to liceu and then I moved to the city and that meant at that time that I would go down at the end of September and then

come home for the week of—some of Christmas and then go back down, then come back a week and a half for Easter and then don’t come back until June.

01-00:27:23 Warrin: How long a travel was it between your home and Ponta Delgada?

01-00:27:27 Rodrigues: I stayed down there every day. I wouldn’t come—

01-00:27:30 Warrin: No, but I mean—

01-00:27:31 Rodrigues: But what?

01-00:27:32 Warrin: What was the distance?

01-00:27:34 Rodrigues: Forty-four kilometers in the bus, which is really the bus we took. Was over an hour because it meanders around. And it was an expensive proposition because I still remember that the ticket one way was almost a man’s wages working in the field.

01-00:27:58 Warrin: For a day?

01-00:27:58 Rodrigues: For a day.

01-00:27:59 Warrin: Yeah. And how many people your age went to liceu from a distance like you did?

01-00:28:12 Rodrigues: Oh, there weren’t that many. From Lomba da Maia I was the only one. I had a cousin which now lives in California that was already graduating and then went on to University of Porto. And there was a couple others that dabbled on the first, second year of liceu and then they would flunk too many and the family said, “No, enough is enough of this.” Part of the problem there was the economics of it. That you would have to pay the tuition, which I remember at that time was 500 escudos per semester. But that wasn’t the biggest one. The biggest one is that you had to set up another house in the city. You had to rent the place for you to stay and groceries and dress. Obviously you had to dress a little different. And the school supplies and all that. So that was very taxing on the family to do it. Even if there were scholarships or financial aid, it was not a system that was open and embracing and say, “Okay,” like they do now. Now they even provide the buses to take you all the way to the next town. Yeah.

01-00:29:30 Warrin: So you lived alone in Ponta Delgado?

01-00:29:34 Rodrigues: I lived in a house that belonged to a cousin of mine, in a room.

01-00:29:39 Warrin: And they lived there?

01-00:29:41 Rodrigues: They lived there.

01-00:29:42 Warrin: And so they cooked for you and—

01-00:29:44 Rodrigues: Yes.

01-00:29:44 Warrin: So you were living with a family?

01-00:29:46 Rodrigues: With a family. All the students came and lived with a family. Nobody cooked. There was no apartment that I knew of. Everybody lived, sometimes two students to a room, or sometimes—but everybody lived with a family and they would provide the food and wash your clothes and all that.

01-00:30:02 Warrin: And how did that work out, living with a family for—

01-00:30:04 Rodrigues: It worked fine. It’s difficult. You’re away from home. You’re away from that comfortable area that you are in your house. You’re in somebody else’s house. It was hard to get away. I remember getting on that bus because the bus would stop right across from my house and I would cry for, I don’t know, many kilometers. I knew I had to go. It was not that I’m not going to go. But it was not like, “Oh, I’m going to school. Haha, look at me.” it was very difficult to separate. As you got older, then you established. But you’re eleven years old, you come into a town that you’ve never been to to live with a family that you don’t even know, going to the school that you don’t even know. I still remember when I went to do the admission test, that I kept asking my cousin, “How do I get there?” because I didn’t even know where the school was. I didn’t even know what door is, the door to get in, that type of anxiety that you had at eleven and you’re alone. Just completely alone.

01-00:31:11 Warrin: And you have to have quite an internal drive to want to do this in the first place. Certainly most of your young neighbors and so forth had no idea that they would go through this routine. What drove you to leave your family, in effect, and go off to study in the big city?

01-00:31:41 Rodrigues: I’ve wondered about that so many times and I don’t know if it was the example of my dad that struggled so hard to provide for the family or if it was also the fact that with my dad having people working around him—I always got along with all the people. So even as a young child I spent a lot of time with all the people asking questions, maybe bugging the hell out of them. And I quickly understood that working in the land really was no future. It was very hard work. This was at a time in Portugal that there was no safety net, no social net. So you work, you eat. You don’t work, you don’t eat. And there’s never an end to it. I saw men, at that time eighty years old, that still walked to the field every day, even though, Don, they would walk—like take two and a half hours to get there, work for like an hour, and then walk back again. But that’s something they had to do because they had to feel that they’re contributing something. And so I saw education as a way to break away from it. Not that I was revolted by agriculture. That’s not it. It’s just the way to economically get myself better because there was no other way.

01-00:33:07 Warrin: So how many years did you go to liceu?

01-00:33:16 Rodrigues: Six. Six.

01-00:33:17 Warrin: Six years.

01-00:33:18 Rodrigues: Yeah.

01-00:33:19 Warrin: And it is unusual to see people in this community who arrived here years ago who went all the way through liceu before they arrived here. And then what was your decision to leave? To emigrate?

01-00:33:46 Rodrigues: Then I realized that my dad was determined to give me education because I wanted to be—none of my brothers wanted to go to school. None went past the fourth grade no matter how much he tried. But I also realized that my dad’s life would have been upside down for him to provide for me to go to Lisbon, as we said at that time, to the mainland. In those days there were a couple of universities: Port, Coimbra, and Évora. And if you take the cost of living, the transportation, the thing all to live, I would have bankrupted my dad in no time. I would have an education and hopefully in four or five years I’ll be earning some money but I would have left the family in pretty bad shape, I think. At least in my mind, that’s the way I saw it.

So I had met an uncle that lived here. And in a conversation with him, he let me know that there was the ability here that you could work and go to school

and that to me sounded like a combination that was a winning combination, that I could do both and that’s what happened.

01-00:35:05 Warrin: So the idea did go through your mind of going to Lisbon, or Porto, or Coimbra.

01-00:35:12 Rodrigues: Yes.

01-00:35:13 Warrin: And it’s something you might have done if you were from a more prosperous family?

01-00:35:19 Rodrigues: Absolutely. Absolutely.

01-00:35:21 Warrin: But you left on a student visa?

01-00:35:26 Rodrigues: Correct.

01-00:35:28 Warrin: And what did you think America was going to be like?

01-00:35:35 Rodrigues: Well, that was not a shock because you have even a distorted view from the movies. Obviously there was no television. But my biggest awe was—I arrived at the San Francisco Airport on TWA, I’ll never forget, in the morning. My uncle was late to pick me up. So we didn’t get off the airport probably until 7:00. I waited for a couple hours for him. And as we drove back to Marin County─he lived in Marin County─we took the drive on Nineteenth Avenue. I am sure you recognized, right? And I know you’ve been to the Azores a zillion times. To see that much traffic, that many cars, I probably kept my mouth open from the airport all the way to over there. I said, “My God.” I couldn’t concentrate on a conversation because when I thought that was probably—okay, maybe there’s a jam over here and then never stopped. So that was my first, first big thing. The other part that was interesting, especially as you went to school, is that even though there were people struggling, even in school and all that, it definitely was clear there was a different standard of living than was done in Portugal. I don’t know the English word. Um desafogo [a relief]. You could see that people had this opportunity right from the beginning. The houses, the cars, the way they behaved. Because when I got here, because my English was so limited—as you know, that in Portugal in those days, we spent five years studying French and only three of English. The opposite of that would have been very nice, thank you. And then, of course, the English was the British English, right, which is—

01-00:37:42 Warrin: Yes.

01-00:37:42 Rodrigues: So you get with just three years of English, which somehow they don’t teach too much to speak as much as to write it or read it, and a little bit of the British. So I said, “No, no. I want to go one year.” So I went one year to high school here. So I went for high school.

01-00:37:58 Warrin: Whereabouts?

01-00:37:59 Rodrigues: San Rafael High School.

01-00:38:01 Warrin: So this is where you came to stay with an uncle?

01-00:38:06 Rodrigues: Yeah.

01-00:38:08 Warrin: And he lived in San Rafael?

01-00:38:09 Rodrigues: San Rafael.

01-00:38:10 Warrin: And so you decided that you weren’t quite ready to move to college?

01-00:38:19 Rodrigues: I would have flunked. My English was not enough to do the work. So I went to San Rafael High School for one year.

01-00:38:29 Warrin: And that gave you enough time to improve your English, prepare yourself for college?

01-00:38:36 Rodrigues: It did. Two things it did to me were very important. Number one is that I changed my classes. Like I was able to take two classes of English rather than just one. In those days, was many people have the woodshop and the body shop and all that and I didn’t come to learn that. So I accumulated as much as I could and I took classes that I could use the English. I didn’t want to spend too much time in math, but social science, whatever it is. And I poured myself into it because I know that was the time I have. And I used that time to bring my English up to par and then from there, then I went to college at Marin, in Kentfield.

01-00:39:21 Warrin: And to get into College of Marin was there some admissions process?

01-00:39:32 Rodrigues: I don’t remember if there was any test or anything. I don’t remember.

01-00:39:35 Warrin: For a junior college or a community college, a little different than San Francisco State.

01-00:39:40 Rodrigues: Yes. Yes. Yes. I think it was just the grades and transcript and all that. Now it seems to be a little different. You had to go to immigration, I had to present my grades from the high school. I have to have approval from the immigration. It was typical at that time to renew your visa, you had to come back to the immigration and bring your transcript. So I did that. I have no difficulty going from one to—

01-00:40:10 Warrin: Because you were on a student visa?

01-00:40:11 Rodrigues: Absolutely.

01-00:40:12 Warrin: How did you acquire a student visa to come to the US?

01-00:40:18 Rodrigues: That was a tough one. That was a tough one because the year is 1963. The Portuguese war in Africa is going on and so I was able to parlay my way through it to get somebody to give me a one-year visa.

01-00:40:46 Warrin: Because how old were you when you left?

01-00:40:49 Rodrigues: Because I was going to be eighteen.

01-00:40:52 Warrin: And so you were up for the draft?

01-00:40:53 Rodrigues: Was up for the draft. But I was very convincing. There was a sergeant that gave those visas and I think somebody slipped him an envelope with a greeting card and then I went to the governor. He had to sign the visa. And one of his sons was in school with me. Two of his sons. So I was convincing with them that I needed help, that my visa needed to be signed off, and I was able to do it. But when you leave in those days, you bought your airfare ticket roundtrip.

01-00:41:49 Warrin: Because it was a promise to—

01-00:41:51 Rodrigues: To return.

01-00:41:51 Warrin: —return.

01-00:41:52 Rodrigues: And, in fact, a promise that made sense because I considered going back. That’s not a question about that I considered. It’s just that after a while of being here and being part of the system and the education that we did, and I remember when Mota Amaral was in the presidency, because we were schoolmates.

01-00:42:14 Warrin: Really?

01-00:42:15 Rodrigues: Yeah, schoolmates.

01-00:42:16 Warrin: Nice fellow.

01-00:42:18 Rodrigues: One of the nicest men you would ever, ever meet, then and now. He didn’t change. Believe me, he didn’t change from those days. And we spoke about it very frankly. He says, “You come and all that.” But I realized that after my education here, after my contacts here, knowing the system, I was more comfortable. I would not survive, I don’t think, or at least as well as I thought I could.

01-00:42:49 Warrin: Well, it’s interesting. Most people may have some qualms about emigrating but it’s more or less a final decision when they go. It’s a one-way ticket and they’re going to do as well as they can. You left your options open right til the end, partly because you had to, but also you were sort of testing out this atmosphere.

01-00:43:20 Rodrigues: My first time back was ’69. I didn’t go for several years, as you can see. But as I went back, I think it was obvious that the local economy could use people that had modern up-to-date views, contacts. Like one of the conversations with Mota Amaral at that time, tourism. I had been involved with a car rental company and all that and going back I could see things they were doing that didn’t make any sense. But then I also realized that you have to know a system from the inside to survive and do well, otherwise by the time you learn that the ship already passed you by.

01-00:44:28 Warrin: And so you felt already you understood the system better in the US than there.

01-00:44:34 Rodrigues: Absolutely.

01-00:44:35 Warrin: When you had been in liceu but you were the son of a farmer.

01-00:44:42 Rodrigues: Correct. There was even an expression in liceu. There was the expression, I don’t know if you ever heard this one before, is os da cidade e os de fora da cidade.

01-00:44:56 Warrin: Yeah. Those in the city and those outside of the city.

01-00:44:59 Rodrigues: From out of the city. And I remember we had an intramural soccer league. Maybe that was just my year. That the guys from the city had a team and it was called Le Premiere. Of course, that time French was symbolic of anything that was very important, right. Of course—

01-00:45:26 Warrin: And the culture—

01-00:45:27 Rodrigues: Yeah, yeah. There were like—yeah. And ours was called Botafogo. And our whole purpose was we would never lose to them and the whole year we never lost a game. No matter if we had to bleed to death in that field, because that was that on the city, not from out of the city. There was a little bit—

01-00:45:47 Warrin: So this would —

01-00:45:49 Rodrigues: Just a little meandering here. This is a time that I remember going to liceu maybe in my second year or til the third year maybe even. Where one of the family’s children were taken to liceu every day by a horse-driven cart, you know the ones with the guy hanging on the outside, that you see the Queen of England type with a guy on the top and a guy on the back. That was still happening.

01-00:46:17 Warrin: So essentially in the city, outside the city, this is upper class and lower class. There’s no real middle class?

01-00:46:30 Rodrigues: There was in the city a middle class because as you live in the city and you learn, there were people that were the sons of merchants and all that. But because they were from the city, because they really knew their way, they had the contacts, because they already had clothes that were a little different. I came to school, I still had my clothes that were done locally. Of course, now, I wish we could all buy locally made clothes, right? But I had my shoes made

by my neighbor across the street, the shoemaker. And my first shoes I still remember because it was a way to last longer. The soles were made with a tire because that way could never wear, right, because Portuguese-bought shoes were terribly weak and especially with the weather. So I’m sure that my pants and all that, nothing was as fancy as that.

The other thing, too, is there’s the local accents, right. You might say that they all speak with a São Miguel accent but I can tell you which village he’s from, has different accents.

01-00:47:40 Warrin: So you were quite an outsider—

01-00:47:43 Rodrigues: Yes.

01-00:47:43 Warrin: —here in the city. And you might have perhaps even felt going back in 1969 that you were still sort of an outsider if you settled in Ponta Delgada.

01-00:47:59 Rodrigues: Sure. I’ll be an outsider twice now, right.

01-00:48:03 Warrin: But here you fit into a much larger community that is essentially more accepting. So you went to a year at community college?

01-00:48:24 Rodrigues: No, I went three years because—

01-00:48:27 Warrin: Three.

01-00:48:28 Rodrigues: —I started to electronic engineering.

01-00:48:32 Warrin: What got you interested in that?

01-00:48:35 Rodrigues: I left Portugal with this thing, I wanted to be an electronic engineer. Got over here, got the English from the high school, went to College of Marin and start doing the math and engineering. And it took me a long time to realize that I was behind the curve already. Not only the people that were in those grades, math was way better than mine is—since your age and I, we’re a little closer, you remember the CB radios, right? Shortwave?

01-00:49:10 Warrin: Sure.

01-00:49:11 Rodrigues: These people who were there, they already had their shortwave sets, their diodes and triodes. They were into it. I am still thinking about what it is. I had this thing that it was something I should be doing that would be interesting but not because I was as knowledgeable—

01-00:49:33 Warrin: Or brought up with it.

01-00:49:34 Rodrigues: Or brought up on it. We had no phone. At the time of Salazar, if you were caught with a shortwave radio, you would be in the prison the next day. You couldn’t even listen to certain stations on the commercial radio, right? But these kids were really, really, really into the system. I remember that they even had a CB, the first time I even went there, that they would collect the codes from all over the world. “Donald, today I spoke with somebody in Macao,” and all that, and they had the frequencies. I realized that these people were way ahead of me.

01-00:50:07 Warrin: This is at College of Marin?

01-00:50:08 Rodrigues: College of Marin. So I changed that, my engineering school. I changed. Then I took general education and then I went to business. So I wasted a little time in my physics labs and all that good stuff.

01-00:50:26 Warrin: I’m not sure anything like that is a waste of time. So you were there for three years and then you were accepted at San Francisco State.

01-00:50:40 Rodrigues: San Francisco State.

01-00:50:42 Warrin: And what was your original major?

01-00:50:44 Rodrigues: My major was business marketing.

01-00:50:47 Warrin: Marketing.

01-00:50:48 Rodrigues: Marketing.

01-00:50:48 Warrin: This is pretty much what you stuck with?

01-00:50:52 Rodrigues: Yes. Yes, it was. It was.

01-00:50:54 Warrin: And you apparently had an interesting life at San Francisco State. You were there for how many years?

01-00:51:03 Rodrigues: Oh, I was there for a long time. Come to think of it, I was like almost ten or eleven years because I went there for marketing. I went into the business school and became very involved in the marketing club. As a matter of fact, became the president of the marketing club. And the other day I—not the other day but when I moved I threw some things out I shouldn’t have thrown out. The marketing club, we created a thing called Advaluator. We came up with the idea of validating ads for telling the truth. I had the letterhead that said Advaluator, Marketing Club, San Francisco State. And I became very involved with that. Before people had the social media of nowadays, if you wanted to get a Shell credit card you would go around the campus, there would be those things stuck on the wall, you take one application. Right? Remember? Well, we were the guys that did it for the state and we got paid. So we raised money. And San Francisco State at that time and now was very big in foreign students. Now, this is a time, in the early sixties, where San Francisco State cafeteria had white tablecloth.

01-00:52:27 Warrin: Really?

01-00:52:30 Rodrigues: I became the president of the Foreign Students Club. We were eight hundred and some students at that time and we put a big dinner every year. Huge dinner. Over two thousand people. We all cooked different foods and we had buffet style with the faculty and all that to raise monies for different things. So I got very involved in that. And from that involvement I became interested in politics. So the university went through the riot time.

01-00:53:01 Warrin: This was a very political era.

01-00:53:03 Rodrigues: Oh, very. We had Reagan as the governor. We had Alioto as the mayor of San Francisco, and we had a rapid sequence of presidents of the university. Went from one to the other. Then we got Hayakawa and then we got Romberg. I worked for both of them. So the Associated Students at that time were taken over by the State of California and went under receivership.

01-00:53:36 Warrin: And why was that?

01-00:53:38 Rodrigues: Because the state came in and made an investigation and they found out that the students were using some of the student money and it had been stolen, misappropriated, whatever. And basically what was happening, according to their complaint, is that students were paying students to work in community

areas, like today it’s very acceptable, community involvement. And this is the time that even though the Civil Rights Bill had been passed, the United States is really going through the struggle of civil rights. One of the biggest names in San Francisco was Dr.—not Goodlet but I’m going to say the—he was the editor of the black newspaper. So people, through the Associated Students, were being used or paid or whatever it was, to help in these causes. That created enough for the state to come in and freeze the Associated Students, who went into receivership. The first election of the receivership—this was a time that there was battles in the campus and the invasion by the police and all that. There was an election and that first election after the receivership I ran for treasurer.

01-00:54:56 Warrin: And you were elected.

01-00:54:59 Rodrigues: No. Actually, I was not elected. The guy who was elected could not serve and then I became the guy that was invited to the—and so I became the treasurer of the Associated Students for one year, the first year after the receivership. And that’s when we started all kinds of programs, including the Women’s Center. We opened the first funding for a childcare center at university, which was something unheard of. At that time, at the sixties, maybe it wasn’t that far advanced but it was advanced to what the political system was.

01-00:55:33 Warrin: What year was this?

01-00:55:35 Rodrigues: I think that’s ’67, ’68. Sixty-eight. And as I was doing the Associated Students and working with different groups, the dean of students invited me to work for their office as an advisor to student groups, minority student groups, sororities, and also the disabled students and gay students and all that. So I worked for that three, four years as a student advisor, and also going to school part-time, the Dean of Students office. And that’s when Dr. Hayakawa came into office. That’s how I knew him, because I was in the same wing where they were. I worked okay in there. We rebuilt the Associated Students from $100,000 to a million and a half budget in three years.

01-00:56:41 Warrin: How did you accomplish that?

01-00:56:42 Rodrigues: We got more people involved at the university. We got students to see that there was a value to it, that the fees got increased. And, of course, we started a newspaper and that created a lot of revenue and all kinds of other programs. And for my involvement with them as an advisor from the university Dean of Students office, they asked me if I wanted to become the general manager of the Associated Students. Now, mind you, I’m still with a student visa. But one of my fondest memories was passing Jack, which was the chief of police at

San Francisco State, and you’re supposed to register when you work for the university. And Jack would say, “José, you coming to register?” “Oh, yeah, I’ll be there.” But he knew that I was not. Actually, with a student J visa, you could work part-time. You couldn’t work full-time. I was working full-time, which is something I’d not recommend when you’re trying to do your degree and working full-time.

01-00:57:54 Warrin: I would imagine, yes.

01-00:57:56 Rodrigues: It was excruciating, especially if you work in the same place that you go to school. Because when you were in university and a job, you say, “Okay, I’m going to leave at 5:00 because I have to go across the Bay,” is one thing. But when you are in the building that you are working in and you know the class starts at 7:00, the tendency is, “Oh, yeah, I’ll work until 6:30 because I go to—” and then you commute home. And I was living in Tiburon so I was commuting over an hour each way. So that stretched my master’s degree to a longer time than I would ever recommend to anybody.

01-00:58:33 Warrin: No wonder. We’re going to have to take a—

01-00:58:35 Rodrigues: Oh, yeah.

01-00:58:36 Warrin: —break here.

01-00:58:36 Rodrigues: Please. And I’ll make a pit stop.

Begin Audio File 2 rodrigues_José_02_05-08-13_stereo.mp3

02-00:00:00 Warrin: So, José, you were a foreign student at San Francisco State and you became treasurer of the Associated Students. How did you get in that position? How were you qualified? How did people believe in you to elect you to be a treasurer of the Associated Students?

02-00:00:47 Rodrigues: I think that came from my involvement, one as the marketing club, and the other one as president of the International Students Association.

02-00:00:59 Warrin: And how did you become president of the International Students—

02-00:01:03 Rodrigues: I was elected by the group.

02-00:01:05 Warrin: I understand.

02-00:01:06 Rodrigues: I was interested in international students, what was going on. We were eight hundred and some. At that time we were starting to get the wave from the East but mostly it was European still. And we had a lot of things in common. Like in the College of Marin we started a soccer club. And so I was interested. And there were some issues of the foreign students that were very typical, besides the difficulty of language and all that. This was also a time when people now complained that some of our tuition is going up. At that time tuition for an American student was pretty decent. The foreign student was already huge, and out-of-state, too. As a matter of fact, the foreign student was even more than out-of-state.

02-00:01:59 Warrin: I think so.

02-00:02:00 Rodrigues: There was three levels. California, non-California American, and then out of the United States. And they were going to increase it again and we were very vocal in lobbying not to do it, not that we had anything to offer because we couldn’t vote. And so my actions in that area led the people to believe that I would have provided some leadership to Associated Students and the fact that I was from the business school, then obviously I would fit well into the treasury. That’s how I ended up there.

02-00:02:38 Warrin: But you had some innate sense that you could be a leader?

02-00:02:45 Rodrigues: I thought I could contribute. I thought I had something that I could contribute. Yes. And there’s also the fact that, coming from a system in Portugal where you did not participate in the political process, it was—and I couldn’t participate here because I was a foreign student, obviously. It was gratifying to be able to vote on a student election and also run as an officer and campaign freely in a student election. So that was a gratification.

02-00:03:22 Warrin: And this step up to the general manager in the Associated Students while you’re still on a foreign student visa, you had to have a lot of support from the university administration to do this, wouldn’t you?

02-00:03:44 Rodrigues: Yes, I did. I think that the university saw more qualities in me than I probably did. Several of the administrators did. And even when I left, when I resigned from the Associated Students after six years, I still met with Dr. Romberg at

that time, was the university president. And he tried to convince me, “Don’t leave. We need you to stay.” I said, “No longer, Dr. Romberg. It’s time. I need to move on.”

02-00:04:16 Warrin: Time to graduate.

02-00:04:17 Rodrigues: Time to graduate and to go about my life. If I had gone into a teaching position, I think that that’s a whole different—from my time and there at university, being in a staff on university is not something very appealing to me.

02-00:04:47 Warrin: Which is essentially what you were.

02-00:04:48 Rodrigues: That’s what I was. Yeah. I was in a staff associate. I was also part of the political process, you might remember those days where, when tenure was— the hearings were done, students had no participation. That was the idea in the Associated Students when we got the student representative in the committee.

02-00:05:09 Warrin: Oh, really?

02-00:05:11 Rodrigues: Yeah.

02-00:05:11 Warrin: So you pushed for that?

02-00:05:14 Rodrigues: Oh, we worked tirelessly at that. We were also at that time when the students did the evaluation of teachers through the Max [Maximization] and all kinds of other publications. Now became very common but at that time it wasn’t. So I was very, very involved but I could notice that there was an independence, a prestige from the faculty that you could never obtain or have in the staff. Especially depending on the line you reported to. If you were on the provost side, whatever, maybe you get a little more. But if you were on the support side, yeah, go take care of the garden and don’t bug me too much.

02-00:05:55 Warrin: And were you on the support side essentially or—

02-00:06:00 Rodrigues: I was, even though my line reported to the academic, because I was under the Student Affairs office.

02-00:06:13 Warrin: So then you finally decided after six years—

02-00:06:20 Rodrigues: After six years with the Associated Students.

02-00:06:23 Warrin: Would they have loved to keep you as an undergraduate—or you were working on your MBA at this—

02-00:06:30 Rodrigues: I had finished. I had finished my MBA then.

02-00:06:34 Warrin: Oh, you had finished your MBA?

02-00:06:35 Rodrigues: Yeah, I had finished my MBA.

02-00:06:36 Warrin: And what year did you finish your MBA?

02-00:06:38 Rodrigues: I believe it’s 1978.

02-00:06:42 Warrin: Okay. And what year did you graduate with your BS?

02-00:06:48 Rodrigues: God, ’72.

02-00:06:55 Warrin: Okay. So they would have liked you to have stayed on as staff.

02-00:07:02 Rodrigues: At the university. Yeah.

02-00:07:03 Warrin: At the university with your MBA.

02-00:07:04 Rodrigues: Yeah.

02-00:07:05 Warrin: Which, by this time, you were somewhat overqualified for what you were doing.

02-00:07:10 Rodrigues: Probably.

02-00:07:11 Warrin: There were a couple of things that you did, to step back a bit, when you first got here and working in radio. How soon did this take place?

02-00:07:31 Rodrigues: This comes in a funny way. This uncle of mine that lived in California. I had two uncles that lived in California. One died very soon after I got here. And he was in the dairy business. As a matter of fact, for you that travel around that area a lot, when you go to Vallejo by Sears Point, there’s a dairy, still see a little bit left. That was his dairy. And that’s the Clementino, on my mother’s side. And then the other uncle came to the United States. He was part of the group that left the Azores, the curse of immigration, in the fifties to go to Santo Domingo. They came to recruit people to work in the sugar plantations. And these people were treated like slaves.

02-00:08:19 Warrin: I would imagine, yes.

02-00:08:21 Rodrigues: Recently I was doing some research and I found in the Diário de Notícias of New Bedford a letter from some of them signed by one of my uncles and my cousins, asking the community to do something because they’re starving to death in Santo Domingo. And a lot of those people went back to the Azores. Some of them went to Brazil. Through Facebook I just encountered one person that would be my mother’s second cousin whose family went to Brazil. My uncle went to Venezuela and he went to work for this family in the household. It happened that this family, the head of the household, became the ambassador of Venezuela to the United States and they brought him to Washington, DC. His brother, which has a dairy, then did the paperwork for him to stay as a milker and then he moved to California. When he was in California in Marin County, at that time the KTIM radio station and the IJ newspaper were owned by the same family so there was a lot of Portuguese and they came up with the idea that we needed some Portuguese program, whatever it was. There was also a Portuguese store there called the Sousa Brothers on Lincoln. And he convinced my uncle. My uncle had a lot of leadership qualities. Only got to third grade. And he could play the Portuguese guitar and sing because records were non-existent. So he started on KTIM, I think it was once a week, with a radio program where he would play, he would talk, he would play, he would talk, and that was the program. And that kept going. So by the time I arrived in the United States, he was doing a program daily out of the radio station KOFY-AM in San Francisco on Market Street, almost across from where Maria Cabral used to have the Carvalho Travel Agency. That’s how I met Maria Cabral.

02-00:10:25 Warrin: Oh, really?

02-00:10:26 Rodrigues: Yeah. So I started working with him back in’ 64. My uncle also imported Portuguese movies to show through California. So I started working with him on that, too. And then later on we added on Portuguese singers. We would bring about five, six groups a year to tour California. And that’s why I pound

so heavily on my nieces and nephews to concentrate in school because here I was trying to finish school. At one time the radio program was three hours a day. Show Portuguese movies and singers all over California, and I always ended up doing the Tulare, Visalia, the long trips.

02-00:11:12 Warrin: This was while you were at College of Marin?

02-00:11:15 Rodrigues: And at San Francisco State.

02-00:11:16 Warrin: And at San Francisco State.

02-00:11:17 Rodrigues: So I would leave San Francisco State at, say, like 2:30 in the afternoon, drive all the way to Tulare, show the Portuguese movies, drive back to Marin County, record the news for the next day program, and be back at school at 8:00. Now, obviously I had no time to read a book.

02-00:11:36 Warrin: Obviously. How long to travel from Tulare to Marin County?

02-00:11:42 Rodrigues: It’s three and a half hours.

02-00:11:43 Warrin: A good three and a half hours.

02-00:11:45 Rodrigues: And he had the Dodge Polara with a 500. Remember those big engines when gas was ten cents a gallon? I did stupid things, let’s put it that way. Even though education I wanted to do, there was so many things on my plate that I could have cut down substantially. The radio program and all that took a lot of my energy. And, of course, the good thing is that I was able to meet with a lot of people. Now, the radio programs in those days—and I keep saying those days all the time because now they don’t have any of that. They were radio personalities like my uncle and many other guys. Not only they had the radio program and they had the picnics and all that, people don’t realize that they had fan clubs. Like my uncle I think had sixteen all over California. In Oakland there was like three. And every month, throughout the month, a fan club would meet and he would go there and they would have lunch. And I would go very often because these fan clubs are the ones that supported the radio and make sure that advertisers were fed. For example, just linguiça alone. In Oakland we had Gomes linguiça and Moniz linguiça and Amaral linguiça, Santos linguiça. Just in the city of Oakland.

02-00:13:09 Warrin: Yeah.

02-00:13:10 Rodrigues: Oakland had five Portuguese halls.

02-00:13:15 Warrin: Particularly in the Fruitvale area.

02-00:13:17 Rodrigues: There’s the Fruitvale, the Flor da Mocidade of North Oakland, which we used to call the Goulart hall. There was the Santo Antonio on 78 [Avenue] and there was another one on a higher avenue. So there was a lot of action. So I also spend a lot of time supporting my uncle because he came to realize that with his third grade, I had a better preparation. So I would write all the letters for the contracting of the movies from Portugal, contracting of the singers. I did all that besides going to school and doing my political stuff.

02-00:13:52 Warrin: Well, you had an amazing amount of energy at that—

02-00:13:57 Rodrigues: I had energy that I never had since. No. Today there’s not, not even close. I slept very little.

02-00:14:05 Warrin: I can imagine. Did you have time for a social life at that point?

02-00:14:13 Rodrigues: I did. There was a social life with the community. But less social life at the school because I had to get back. I remember one time with the radio program, my uncle built a studio at home in San Rafael. He lived in San Rafael by Dominican College. Like at College of Marin, if my class finished at 3:00, he would go pick me up, then I bought a car, so that we could be on the air at four o’clock.

02-00:14:49 Warrin: And what did you do on the air?

02-00:14:53 Rodrigues: And I know I’m biased on this because of my involvement. There were no more important element to the maintenance and the expansion of the Portuguese community than the radio programs. I know today we talk about the fraternals and all they did. Not that fraternals did not have a very important role, specifically in educating the people on how to become a citizen, how to participate in organization. That they did well. But when you arrive from the old country with a debt, the first thing the fraternal gives you is another one. You bought a policy that you had to pay for insurance that you might or might not need to become a member. It’s nothing. You didn’t get anything. The radio programs at that time provided you the daily news. People didn’t understand the [American media] news. Provided the news from Portugal, even though that was sent by mail, three weeks later on pink paper from ANI [Agência Nacional de Informação]. Provided the latest records. All

the deaths, the births, marriages, jobs. We advertised jobs every day. We advertised business. Without the radio programs, people wouldn’t have real estate offices and would not have travel agencies. Can you think that anybody in Berkeley is going to go down to a real estate office by a Portuguese that’s right from the islands to buy a house? No. They’re going to go to Coldwell Banker, somebody they know. So, too, the grocery stores. All that business that’s created around that time, the churches, the folk groups, the soccer clubs, all that comes with the radio programs. So the radio programs, if you could imagine, it was like a whole spectrum of the radios into a limited amount of time. You had the records and then you had the news and the news of the community. Whatever you felt was important, including advertising says, “A family arrives today with three children. They need everything. Do you have anything?” And people would call and says, “I have a bed. I have washing machines.” And then we would coordinate getting that information without saying their names on the air to give it to whomever to go make it so that family would have a place to sleep or an apartment.

02-00:17:14 Warrin: So this would require also significant preparation before you went on the air.

02-00:17:20 Rodrigues: Yes.

02-00:17:21 Warrin: You had to get this organized so...

02-00:17:23 Rodrigues: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Even though not as well as we could, and sometimes you would be looking at a piece of paper in English and do it in Portuguese right off. And obviously people today say there was mistakes. There was plenty of mistakes. But to take a piece of news and translate it live is not easy.

02-00:17:54 Warrin: How soon after you arrived here in California did you begin on the radio?

02-00:18:00 Rodrigues: Right away. At first I would only go on special occasions. Like I did the program with Christmas with him or when I would do the tenth of June and all that. And then it became people liked my voice or my way, then I start doing that. And then also did the remotes. Like when Luso-American Education Foundation started. They used to have the big banquets in Jack London Square. I used to go and broadcast from there. When UPEC did the big thing on Jack London [Square] not Jack London, the Marina, as a matter of fact, the radio station was right here in San Mateo. I did live from there, with live broadcasting right from the banquet, from the Portuguese community event.

02-00:18:53 Warrin: So coming to the United States, you did have a good education when you got here and then going on the radio, that had to have built up your confidence in terms of communicating with people and understanding the community, not only the Portuguese community but the general community in which you were living.

02-00:19:23 Rodrigues: Yes. It gave me, absolutely right, enormous bridge because I could go to San Francisco State and understand the new younger generation and how unsatisfied they were with certain things. I could understand the Portuguese immigrant and working like a—whatever they had to do to survive. And I also could understand their children in between, with them with the language, the parents with no language. This is at the time where kids could speak English like crazy and the parents could hardly say anything. So my involvement with the radio and the school, I could bridge all that and I was very comfortable with the microphone. That was something that was very, very comfortable.

02-00:20:13 Warrin: That would have helped you in your job in the Associated Students, for instance. You’re speaking to an audience very often.

02-00:20:23 Rodrigues: Absolutely. Very often. As a matter of fact, so much so that even with my accent, San Francisco State used to have a—in the middle of the campus used to be a speaker’s platform. San Francisco State tradition was there was no classes between 12:00 and 1:00. On that platform, which belonged to Associated Students, you put a microphone and it was like Hyde Park in London. You could go up and you could state your peace. And I remember going to that platform, introducing Margaret Meade, Senator Javits, McCarthy running for president. I remember doing that.

02-00:21:06 Warrin: So you said you had some social life. Did you get married along this way?

02-00:21:14 Rodrigues: Yes, I got married in 1972. Yeah.

02-00:21:18 Warrin: And this was somebody you met from where?

02-00:21:19 Rodrigues: Delminda. Her father had immigrated from São Jorge and she wanted to go to school but the family lived in the dairy by the lighthouse in Point Reyes. Those three dairies, that’s A, B, and C, they were Portuguese from the Nunes family, okay, which I knew very well all of them. This family, it was the assistant director of the San Francisco Zoo, lived down the street from me. And she came, she would help with the children. They had two children. And then she could go to school after. And my house was five houses down and she heard the radio program. We met and the rest is history.

02-00:22:15 Warrin: And so you had children?

02-00:22:18 Rodrigues: No.

02-00:22:18 Warrin: No children.

02-00:22:19 Rodrigues: No, no children.

02-00:22:20 Warrin: So you’ve been married for—

02-00:22:23 Rodrigues: Forty years.

02-00:22:23 Warrin: Forty years. Almost forty-one.

02-00:22:27 Rodrigues: Yeah. She’s already a saint.

02-00:22:29 Warrin: Oh, really? Where is she today?

02-00:22:35 Rodrigues: She’s working. She works for Macy’s. She’s a regional development manager for Macy’s, so she’s in San Francisco today.

02-00:22:43 Warrin: And she was brought up on one of the Nunes dairies?

02-00:22:49 Rodrigues: She wasn’t there very long because as soon as they arrived they realized— there were nine children. While some of them were of school age, and they went from there to Tomales High School, my wife and three of her sisters came in to live towards San Rafael or Corte Madera and two of them started working right away and my wife started going to school.

02-00:23:21 Warrin: Yeah. I’ve been at the Bivalve Dairy, which is one of the—I don’t know whether it’s A, B, or C.

02-00:23:29 Rodrigues: Yeah, I think it’s—

02-00:23:30 Warrin: It’s out there, Point Reyes.

02-00:23:32 Rodrigues: I think it’s C.

02-00:23:33 Warrin: Oh, okay.

02-00:23:33 Rodrigues: Yeah, yeah. They are A, B, and C because that whole area belonged to a family. You know the story, right?

02-00:23:44 Warrin: I’m not that much up on the story.

02-00:23:47 Rodrigues: The whole area belonged to a family and they lived in San Francisco and they lived beyond their means, I guess, so they finally realized that they were going to divide the whole Point Reyes into A through Z and rented it out. That’s why it’s A Ranch, B Ranch, C Ranch all the way. And then lo and behold, as time went on they were spending more than the rent and so they kept selling and so that that family, A, B, and C, all the Nunes or Mendonças, because they are Nunes and Mendonças, all from São Jorge, they’re still the original owners.

02-00:24:26 Warrin: And they actually bought the land. At one time if you were a dairy man in Marin County, you leased the land because it was owned by a couple of huge property owners.

02-00:24:42 Rodrigues: That’s correct. Huge land holds in there, yeah. Because land was not valuable at that time, people were getting rent, and these people got probably more expensive life than they could afford, they start selling. And that’s what happened in Point Reyes and in the lower part of Marin. I knew a lot of the dairymen in Marin County because I came—at that time there was still a lot of dairies.

02-00:25:06 Warrin: Yeah. I recently interviewed Tony Brazil.

02-00:25:10 Rodrigues: Oh. One of my first jobs was working for him and his brother fixing fences on his ranch on Stinson Beach.

02-00:25:19 Warrin: Is that right? Yeah. He’s quite a guy.

02-00:25:25 Rodrigues: Yeah. Know Tony very well.

02-00:25:26 Warrin: He still auctions cattle on the weekends.

02-00:25:31 Rodrigues: Yes. His dad went back to São Jorge. He is the man that brought the first car into São Jorge.

02-00:25:39 Warrin: I heard that.

02-00:25:41 Rodrigues: Yeah. That was his dad.

02-00:25:43 Warrin: I also interviewed Joe Avella. You know Joe?

02-00:25:46 Rodrigues: Yes. I knew him because when I came to Marin County, like when you’re driving to Marin, riding past Sausalito on the left side, there’s Marin City and then there’s a tank on top, which is Tennessee Valley. That was owned by João Raposo from Água Retorta, São Miguel. And that’s where Standard Oil was going to build a city called Marincelo. That’s why they bought that land and then came the idea for the National Park and they took all the land. And then right after that, as you got off to Tiburon, one side, that right was Roque Morais dairy. There’s still a street with his name. And then, after, on the other side of the freeway, was the Bernardo and then as you went up to San Rafael you passed San Rafael, where the YMCA is today, there used to be the barn of one. I forgot the name. And then it was Mr. Pimentel and then Mr. Nunes and then the Silveiras. I still remember all those dairies.

02-00:26:48 Warrin: Yeah. Tony listed a whole bunch of them. I also interviewed Shirley Larkins. You know Shirley?

02-00:26:55 Rodrigues: No, I don’t remember that name.

02-00:26:56 Warrin: No. Shirley was brought up on a dairy farm in the Marin Headlands.

02-00:27:05 Rodrigues: Oh, okay.

02-00:27:10 Warrin: So back to college. So you graduated with an MBA. You worked for several years more for the Associated Students at the university.

02-00:27:21 Rodrigues: No, when I graduated I left right—almost the next year, yeah.

02-00:27:28 Warrin: And you went to work for the Hertz Corporation?

02-00:27:31 Rodrigues: At that time Hertz had a program. They were looking for MBA students that would come in to an intense program because they wanted to renew their management teams. The business was getting more complicated and larger and so I came in into that program, what they call the accelerated program.

02-00:27:56 Warrin: You were probably in a very transitional period, when air travel and automobile rental sort of exploded.

02-00:28:09 Rodrigues: Exploded big time. And also this was the time of the concept, ahead of their time, when there was the president of the United Airlines bought Hertz and Westin because he felt why not put the three companies together. So when you call, you make a call, you make all three reservations. And at that time the pilots of United went bananas. Oh, my God, who wants something. Now Hertz is worth more than United. They just got sold to somebody else anyway. So I was at that time where renting a car became a norm. By the time I left National Car Rental, it was a few years later, it’s true, but I had the West Coast responsibility. Just me. I had over 30,000 rental vehicles. And you could see from year to year. You could see the progress, the growth. The growth. It was just incredible.

02-00:29:07 Warrin: It was quite revolutionary. So when you started at Hertz, what was this like when you moved into American business? You were still in the process of obtaining citizenship, I presume?

02-00:29:25 Rodrigues: Yes. No, no. At that time I was a resident, not a citizen.

02-00:29:30 Warrin: You were a resident?

02-00:29:31 Rodrigues: I was a resident. Yeah. I was a resident. I think the movement at that time, the thing that struck more to me was—how would I put this? How much disconnect there was between life as administrator in a university and a life in a business.

02-00:29:54 Warrin: The two worlds, particularly at that time, were very separate.

02-00:30:01 Rodrigues: Totally unconnected. Totally unconnected. That was the biggest waking point.

02-00:30:07 Warrin: That would have been quite a shock when you moved into industry.

02-00:30:09 Rodrigues: Huge. Huge. Many days I would scratch my head and said, “My God.” You finished the MBA, you think you know everything, right? I’m sure you’ve heard that from all the students you’ve worked with. Read everything, know everything, and then you realize that really there’s no answers to a lot of stuff. That when you work in business, a lot of it is the feel, the perception, the gut feeling. The innuendos. It’s not two plus two is always four. That would be easy. Everybody would do it right, right?

02-00:30:56 Warrin: I guess.

02-00:30:58 Rodrigues: So that was very different. Yeah.

02-00:31:01 Warrin: But you did have the advantage of having had this administrative experience while you were in college, which is rather unusual.

02-00:31:11 Rodrigues: I had that.

02-00:31:12 Warrin: Over an extended period of time.

02-00:31:14 Rodrigues: I had that advantage and the advantage that working with the Associated Students, which very often was an adversary relationship to the university, especially when we were supporting, for example, faculty positions against the vice president of academic affairs and that was very often. So going to the business, I took already an experience that you don’t have to always be pleasing the crowd and the fact, with the Associated Students more than university, that we can change things. University was so geared by the rules and protocols, whatever else, that to change anything was impossible. So while in business, today is one thing, tomorrow find out we made a mistake, we turn around.

02-00:32:11 Warrin: And that’s what you ended up with pretty quickly. So you started in as a trainee.

02-00:32:18 Rodrigues: Trainee.

02-00:32:20 Warrin: And how did you progress in Hertz?

02-00:32:26 Rodrigues: Progressed quite nicely. The program I believe was six months in which you did everything the company does, from cleaning cars to borrowing money. So

we did all that. And then after that I was assigned as a station manager for San Francisco Airport under an airport manager.

02-00:32:50 Warrin: How many managers were there?

02-00:32:53 Rodrigues: At that time there was what we call a city manager, the manager for Hertz for the airport, and there were four of us. And then from that I went then to the manager for the north, in Los Angeles, Burbank to Ventura, and north, and then from that I was promoted to Las Vegas and southern Nevada.

02-00:33:20 Warrin: So at this point you were married and had—

02-00:33:23 Rodrigues: I was married and my wife was going to finish her degree at Northridge.

02-00:33:30 Warrin: So while you were down there she finished Northridge?

02-00:33:35 Rodrigues: Correct.

02-00:33:36 Warrin: And then the two of you moved to Las Vegas?

02-00:33:38 Rodrigues: Las Vegas. I went with Hertz to Las Vegas and she started her retail career with Bullock’s.

02-00:33:29 Warrin: Where? In Las Vegas?

02-00:33:45 Rodrigues: In Las Vegas at the strip. She was the manager for one of the departments there and I was the manager for the Hertz operation in Las Vegas and southern Nevada.

02-00:34:57 Warrin: For how long?

02-00:34:00 Rodrigues: Well, we made a commitment for three years but then a year and a half later they said I needed to move. They needed somebody in San Francisco. No, I had a choice. They needed three people. There was an opening in San Francisco for Northern California, one in L.A., and one in Texas. Well, that was not a very hard decision, was there?

02-00:34:19 Warrin: No.

02-00:34:20 Rodrigues: No. So I was back as an area manager, which meant I was in charge of the Bay Area per se because we had common fleets for all San Francisco, San José, Oakland, all the way to Fresno and all the way to Sacramento. That became my territory.

02-00:34:40 Warrin: So it’s already quite a large territory.

02-00:34:42 Rodrigues: Quite large.

02-00:34:43 Warrin: And your wife?

02-00:34:44 Rodrigues: And my wife moved from there to I. Magnin and she was a manager for I. Magnin fifth floor dresses and later on became a buyer for cosmetics.

02-00:34:56 Warrin: I see.

02-00:34:56 Rodrigues: In a cosmetics department. And then from that job I was promoted to the zone manager for Hertz, which was from Fresno to Alaska and did that for a while. And then there was a buyout, led by Merrill Lynch, to buy out National Car Rental. So I was invited to come with them to be the new owners, and take over the National Car Rental. So I left Hertz, joined National Car Rental with the same area that I had.

02-00:35:37 Warrin: California to Alaska.

02-00:35:38 Rodrigues: California to Alaska. I think the title was VP but other than that—it was more money. And then later on I became the manger for all of it, which was all the western states from Alaska to Mexico and to Wyoming. And I did that. That’s when I had a little over 30,000 cars in the rental fleet.

02-00:36:05 Warrin: So you had quite a responsibility. Is this about the time you moved to Belmont or—

02-00:36:09 Rodrigues: Yes. Yes. And then Delminda was working for I. Magnin and we bought the house in Belmont and then lived there for twelve years or ten years, around that, and then at the end of the National thing, it’s—business is that way. So one day you know something, the next day you might know as much. And the crowd that was in the corporate is some people that wasn’t doing anything for my mental state.

02-00:36:53 Warrin: Or your sanity.

02-00:36:55 Rodrigues: Oh, lack of it. The travel, you can imagine what it was, besides the territory I took over. I mean because the fleets were so big, I had two offices, I had two secretaries, two everything between here and L.A. and I managed both. And the corporate office was in Stamford, Connecticut, and the reservation center was in Minneapolis.

02-00:37:12 Warrin: And so you had to visit all these?

02-00:37:16 Rodrigues: I was on the road four days a week, minimum. I had no children, what am I doing, right? So then I joined a company in San Jose called Green Team, which is a recycling and garbage company that just started out. Very innovative. First thing in recycling. Weighing recycle at the end of the truck. All kinds of different ways.

02-00:37:44 Warrin: How did you get introduced to this company?

02-00:37:47 Rodrigues: It was a blind ad. They were looking for somebody that had a certain amount of—

02-00:37:56 Warrin: Skill and experience?

02-00:37:56 Rodrigues: —skill and experience. And I interviewed with them and they gave me the job. It was something that obviously I didn’t know nothing about but I knew enough about that. I knew enough about that I could help turn down their business because after I studied it a little bit I saw that from the technical point of view they were ten thousand miles ahead of me but there were some basic things they were doing that wasn’t making any sense.

02-00:38:24 Warrin: From the business angle—

02-00:38:25 Rodrigues: Yeah. They were losing money like crazy and very soon we were making money like crazy. And it was just a question of tightening things up and that. So I worked there for about three years and then I said, “This is the time to start doing some things I want to do,” because while I was going through National and the things with marriage. First of all, we lived in Belmont before we went to Southern California—I was involved with the Portuguese Athletic Club. I was one of the starters of the cultural program and the Portuguese Communities Days. At that time it was in March, the big thing. And in San

José I wasn’t as much involved because there was too much things going on. I was involved with some local organizations that I was involved with. And then I said, “No, it’s time to look at some things that I want to do,” and that’s how I became involved with Portuguese Heritage Publications and then got very involved with it.

02-00:39:32 Warrin: So you essentially retired then?

02-00:39:34 Rodrigues: Yes. Well, I retired from an income. I didn’t retire from work. I just get no pay.

02-00:39:46 Warrin: In Portuguese tradition, you had put some money away?

02-00:39:55 Rodrigues: Yes.

02-00:39:56 Warrin: And you had quite a successful career in National Car Rental, right, and Hertz before. And you had enough years to be able to invest and so forth.

02-00:40:10 Rodrigues: Yeah. Before Budget was bought by Avis they called me to go back and they had this whole thing lined up. They already had the whole thing. And that was very disappointing because the guy called me. He was the VP of Human Affairs for Hertz at the time, so I’ve known Jack for umpteen number of years. So when he called me he was sure he was going to convince me. And when I said I wouldn’t do it, he wasn’t a happy camper.

02-00:40:45 Warrin: He was disappointed.

02-00:40:47 Rodrigues: Yeah.

02-00:40:49 Warrin: Well, in a way it is a compliment, of course.

02-00:40:55 Rodrigues: No, it was that he thought of me, absolutely. Absolutely correct.

02-00:41:01 Warrin: So your involvement in the Portuguese community begins first of all immediately when you arrived here and with your uncle. You’re on the radio station. You’re also driving around—

02-00:41:20 Rodrigues: With the movies.

02-00:41:21 Warrin: —within a short period of time showing movies and introducing artists. Who were some of these artists that you—

02-00:41:30 Rodrigues: Oh, my God. Amália, Tony Mourão, Garcia. All the big names down in Portugal. They all came to California because the cachet of coming to California was more money they would make in Portugal in months of work. It was very intense because we would do six to seven shows in eight days. It was two on a day, usually on Sunday, or Saturday/Sunday, and then every night. So it would go boom, boom, boom. But for them it was very, very profitable. Very profitable.

02-00:42:12 Warrin: So you would drive them to these different—

02-00:42:14 Rodrigues: Drive them and MC the show.

02-00:42:18 Warrin: So you must have gotten to know Amália to some extent.

02-00:42:22 Rodrigues: Not—to an extent. Some of them were people that—like one of the guys that I really enjoyed—I don’t know if you remember, there was a band called Mário Simões and he was a heck of a player. That’s one guy that you could get close to it because when he came here he had a nightclub in Portugal and every day we would go we would be in North Beach trying to figure it out because he was trying to figure out how they do it so well and what to copy. So these guys you develop. Others were so kind of full of themselves or distant, we were not the same—

02-00:42:59 Warrin: Perhaps looking down on your—

02-00:43:01 Rodrigues: Yeah. They were important or whatever it was they were. You know how that goes.

02-00:43:09 Warrin: Particularly those from the Continent, I would imagine.

02-00:43:12 Rodrigues: Yeah. There’s the artist versus the non-artist. There’s the pronunciation, the Azorean versus that. There’s the immigrant. What the hell, you’re an immigrant, right? There’s all these things that go on. But on the other hand, there’s tons of them that we developed friendships for a long time and some of them we still do. Still do.

02-00:43:40 Warrin: Yeah. But Amália was perhaps a little distant?

02-00:43:44 Rodrigues: Amália was very, very—

02-00:43:47 Warrin: Yeah, well of course.

02-00:43:47 Rodrigues: It was very short. It was like one show or something. So we didn’t develop. It’s not like you spent a week with somebody.

02-00:43:55 Warrin: And at that time she was—

02-00:43:57 Rodrigues: Oh, she was in the top. She was the biggest.

02-00:44:02 Warrin: How many years did you do the radio and—

02-00:44:13 Rodrigues: From ’64 to ’71.

02-00:44:17 Warrin: Okay. And during those years did you also take people around for those years?

02-00:44:26 Rodrigues: Yeah. I did the radio, the movies, and that for those years.

02-00:44:31 Warrin: And then why did you stop?

02-00:44:34 Rodrigues: I got married and I had different ideas, and my life with my uncle, and I said, “You do your thing and I’m going to go,” because it was also obvious, at least to me, that while the radio program was fun in and of itself, it was not a career. It was riding a wave of need right now with the immigrants and you can see—but it’s going. So for me to dedicate my life to something that was a dead end, there was just no way I’m going to do it.

02-00:45:08 Warrin: Yeah, I can see how you saw that. There were men who did make a career out of it but their educational experience was probably much more limited than yours.

02-00:45:22 Rodrigues: Third grade. My uncle was third grade.

02-00:45:24 Warrin: Yeah.

02-00:45:26 Rodrigues: But he was already an older man, so to him, like some of the others, it was just, okay, if they could ride it for another five or ten years, he’ll be okay. But I didn’t see myself doing this for forty years.

02-00:45:35 Warrin: Right. Joaquim Esteves, for instance.

02-00:45:38 Rodrigues: Joaquim Esteves, Higino Costa and all, that was the end of their careers, so that was not—yeah.

02-00:45:45 Warrin: So ever since you started liceu, you were looking to the future more than many others.

02-00:45:59 Rodrigues: I did because, as I said earlier, is that I would come from liceu. And I remember this like today. I would go. We would go to mass. Always the same mass and we always get to kneel next to my dad. This was a time that our church, the front pews were for the women, the back pews were for men. And because there wasn’t enough pews, only the old people would go to the pews. We stood up. So I still remember going in ’70 , for the first time seeing my dad in a pew. That’s still the first time I realized that he was getting older. Because I remember by the pillar there, we sit there. We have our little white handkerchiefs, put it on the floor, and we kneel next to him. But when I came from liceu, the old people come and sit outside and they would wait and come in. I went to sit with them and ask questions. And I always asked questions and they would tell me the struggles of their lives. And I understood that life is a long time. I’m sure you read as much as I do. The other day I was reading somebody and I guess I got to take that conversation with a grain of salt. And she said that she missed going to wash the clothes in the creek with water up to their waist. And I said, “How can you miss it?” I saw that, I saw people get sick. I saw people come from the city with a sick child and not stop at the pharmacy because they had no money for the medications. I don’t miss it. I was in a good house because the school was close to my home. I always take my shoes off because we had a barn next to the school and throw them in there because I could go to school barefoot with everybody else. But I understood very early the difficulty that people have to make a living and appreciated the hard work. And I think that was part of the thing that made me connect at Hertz and at National. I always get along with all the people. It’s the mechanics and all that. Because I appreciated what they did and the difficulty and the hard part of the job and it’s forever. We went to the university, we do something today, we grow up, we get promoted, we do that. Some of these people started this job when they were twenty years old, like cleaning cars, and forty years later you’re still doing that. When I think about going to do the same thing every day, same way, I appreciate that.

02-00:48:52 Warrin: But somehow as a youth you saw beyond that. Do you know what that was that triggered it in you?

02-00:49:08 Rodrigues: The harshness of work in the fields. Even though my dad never made me work in the fields, like I said, we had men. But my dad was a man that taught me good lessons. I remember one time going to the field, we had, oh, maybe ten or twelve men preparing the field for potatoes. And I got there because I used to take my dad warm lunch, right. And I used to love to go have lunch with him and then there’s always the siesta, right. He would roll up his coat and we would kneel down next to him and I would go to sleep. I was probably nine, ten, or something. And then he’d give me one of those big jugs of wine and says, “Go up to wherever it was, get some water for the men.” I said, “Why am I going to do this? You have ten men over here. I’m the son of the owner and I’m going to do this?” He looked me straight, he said, “They have worked all day and you have not. No way. You going to do it, they’re going to rest.” My dad was the type of owner that he always ate lunch with his men, even though we had built a little house in the field with a kitchen and everything. Not much of a kitchen. But he always came outside and ate with them. So I learned those values of relating to the people that worked very hard.

02-00:50:36 Warrin: And that’s what you carried right through the university and right through your Hertz and National Car Rental—

02-00:50:44 Rodrigues: Absolutely.

02-00:50:45 Warrin: —and the Green Team.

02-00:50:47 Rodrigues: Absolutely.

02-00:50:49 Warrin: And continues on until today, I’m sure.

02-00:50:52 Rodrigues: I have a tremendous admiration for people that do that commitment. Absolutely.

02-00:50:58 Warrin: Well, José, I think we’ll stop it here.

02-00:51:03 Rodrigues: No, whenever—

Interview #2 May 23, 2013 Begin Audio File 3 Rodrigues:_José_03_05-23-13_stereo.mp3

03-00:00:06 Rodrigues: You on now? Yeah. I saw on the camera, the red light.

03-00:00:13 Warrin: So we’re in the home again of José Rodrigues for a second session. And this is Don Warrin and it’s May 23, 2013. José, last time we had a very good conversation about your youth in the Azores, coming to the US, briefly some aspects of your career or careers here in California. And one thing I didn’t notice in the transcript was the name of your uncle who had the radio station.

03-00:01:00 Rodrigues: His name was Agnelo Clementino.

03-00:01:05 Warrin: Agnelo Clementino.

03-00:01:06 Rodrigues: Yeah.

03-00:01:07 Warrin: Yes, I’ve heard the name before.

03-00:01:09 Rodrigues: Yeah, yeah. Kind of unusual name. Both names are unusual.

03-00:01:13 Warrin: You’ve been over the years very active, ever since you got here, with the Portuguese community in many aspects. So let’s talk about some of those things. You’ve discussed the radio. Do you have anything more that you might add?

03-00:01:36 Rodrigues: I might add to the radio an interesting—hopefully not repetition—is that—and probably the Portuguese consulate would have the best record left of those days. Between 1963 and ’71 when I was involved with that, they peaked at about fifty-three radio programs in California.

03-00:01:55 Warrin: Is that right?

03-00:01:56 Rodrigues: Yeah. Some were three hours long daily, some were one hour, some were weekly. And because I know you live in Berkeley, one thing that probably I can tie into it. At that time there was Celeste Ávila, Rosinha, had a program way back in the twenties and thirties and that was KPFA.

03-00:02:15 Warrin: Oh, really?

03-00:02:17 Rodrigues: That’s it. KPFA became later on named Pacifica but it was a foreign language program when it—

03-00:02:23 Warrin: Initially.

03-00:02:24 Rodrigues: Initially. They rented it out. In the sixties, with the advent of television, and radio became less important, until such time as the FM radios became available in cars. So people were able to rent the hour space in the radio programs. And the radio programs, peculiarity to it was, normally they were all over California from Tijuana to Sacramento but the radio programs started back in—Rosinha and Tomás and all the others had taken a leave from the American system. And the radio programs also had fan clubs associated with it. All over. Wherever there was the coverage, there were several cities that would come together and their fan clubs that supported the radio program. It was a very vital time because I came in ’63 and that was the beginning of the eruption of immigration which peaked until ’70-some. Now we look at the statistics. Between ’55 and ’70, one-third of the population of the Azores left the islands and immigrated.

03-00:03:46 Warrin: In fifteen years?

03-00:03:47 Rodrigues: In less than fifteen years. Because actually ’55 you have the volcano, then you have the time going. It was very slow starting. The sixties is when it started. That ten years were the big thing. That ten-year period, over a hundred thousand people left.

03-00:04:02 Warrin: And do you have some idea of the percentage of where they went to?

03-00:04:08 Rodrigues: Yes, I do and I cannot refer to the exact statistics on the book that Heritage Publications did on the agriculture. And mainly in California they came from Terceira, São Jorge, Faial. Pico a little bit. Less São Miguel because São Miguel became more of an East Coast. And, of course, Flores and Corvo, there was not a population to draw from so they became less.

03-00:04:35 Warrin: And in terms of, say, the percentage who came to the United States, I understand that the majority at that time went to California.

03-00:04:47 Rodrigues: Yes. California was huge, even though there was some large immigration to Canada. Okay? Canada took a big chunk. But for the United States, I think there was more California than the East Coast.

03-00:05:03 Warrin: And the East Coast and even Canada tended to be more the eastern islands? Santa Maria, São Miguel? Would that be true?

03-00:05:13 Rodrigues: They probably had a little more from them because the people from Faial and Pico and São Jorge had an association already to the West Coast even before, but also with the volcano, the families, because the program at that time was if you were associated in some way with land in Faial you were a person that qualified for the special visa and the family, so it tended to start from there and expand out.

03-00:05:45 Warrin: Right. And so even if you weren’t exactly from Faial but maybe from Pico or São Jorge, which are close enough, somehow the consulate would give you a visa?

03-00:06:00 Rodrigues: What they did is a lot of people had marriage connections. A lot of people got a little land and said, “Well, I have this little piece of land.” So they found all kinds of connections to get those visas.

03-00:06:14 Warrin: Yeah. Because of that program I think more people emigrated than were inhabitants on Faial if I’m—

03-00:06:28 Rodrigues: Oh, yes. At that time the Azores had, I believe, around 350,000 and Faial did not have a hundred thousand people.

03-00:06:37 Warrin: Of course.

03-00:06:37 Rodrigues: Never did. Yeah. And so that was the big period. And the other big period was back in the early 1900s before the Great Depression. That’s when the Azores got to 350,000 and then it got down to less than 250, and then—that’s the two peaks of the immigration from the Azores.

03-00:06:57 Warrin: Particularly in 1890s, would you say?

03-00:07:00 Rodrigues: Yeah.

03-00:07:01 Warrin: Yeah.

03-00:07:01 Rodrigues: Until, I think, like 1910 or something like that.

03-00:07:02 Warrin: Yeah. Until the early twenties—late teens, early twenties they began to shut down immigration—

03-00:07:14 Rodrigues: Correct.

03-00:07:14 Warrin: —from southern Europe and favor northern Europeans.

03-00:07:17 Rodrigues: Correct. Also, there was a little bit, and I don’t know what the huge numbers would be. There was in the teens, 1910s, some that went back. They were afraid with the World War. They didn’t know with the kids who were American, and people didn’t have the information and so they went back. And I knew of several people that have gone back.

03-00:07:38 Warrin: And stayed—

03-00:07:39 Rodrigues: And were born in the United States, went with their parents back, and then later on came back to the United States. Even the parents could not come because, as you said, the immigration rules had changed and they couldn’t qualify.

03-00:07:52 Warrin: The parents had been here but couldn’t return.

03-00:07:55 Rodrigues: Couldn’t return.

03-00:07:55 Warrin: But the children could because they were citizens—

03-00:07:58 Rodrigues: Correct.

03-00:07:58 Warrin: —by birth.

03-00:07:59 Rodrigues: Yeah, yeah.

03-00:08:00 Warrin: Yeah. Oh, that’s interesting. Before I move on to your community activities, anything else in this regard?

03-00:08:10 Rodrigues: I think that’s what I remember the most. It was an exciting time for me to see the growth that was going on, not only the radio, because the radio being the center of the information. But this is a time that we had the fraternal societies

start blooming, marching bands, the folk groups, the soccer. Soccer was not something that was indigenous to the culture of the Azores. Volleyball was more popular for—

03-00:08:37 Warrin: Is that right?

03-00:08:38 Rodrigues: Yeah. Soccer, if you look back, the first clubs were started in Faial because with the English coming to Faial for the transatlantic cable, they started there first. And you notice that even the names, it’s even English sports. Faial Sports Club.

03-00:08:54 Warrin: That’s right.

03-00:08:54 Rodrigues: Oh, yeah. It still has the English name. And then on became bigger and bigger. And then it started over here with the new immigration and you notice even the Athletic Club has the color of the Faial club. You know what I mean? And then it started all over the place and then the Portuguese priests, there were more Portuguese priests, more congregations. So there was a whole mushrooming of events and organizations from those areas.

03-00:09:25 Warrin: Yeah. As far as the radio, is it true that as radio interest, participation in radio diminished, the Portuguese community didn’t really move to television. It was perhaps too expensive to have a TV program.

03-00:09:48 Rodrigues: Yeah. No, there were several attempts. Carlos Goulart did the first one. Os irmãos Medeiros (the Medeiros brothers). But there was not even the question of the price of the television. It was the production. We don’t have enough of a talent base that even you could fill in for an hour by bringing—unless you want to use the same people all the time. And the quality of the programming that was coming from Portugal was not always available on time, and the quality, blah, blah, blah. And so if you ever give yourself the time to look at some of those radio programs and you put the tape, you’re going to laugh because the television programs are exactly radio programs with the image. Like host says, “And now I want to salute the Warrin family. Nice to see you. I saw you last Sunday. We were at the festival together. What a great event.” It was just an “Arthur Godfrey hour” with no talent. And then they started doing a little more entertainment, but entertainment was very expensive because what people on the radio, different than television—on the radio we walked in, turned on the mic. We had to do some preparation but you were on. On television, not only you had the hour broadcasting, you had the time that you have to rehearse, and all of that required studio time and commitment. That became the expense.

03-00:11:11 Warrin: Yeah. And you had to dress, you had to be good-looking and so forth.

03-00:11:13 Rodrigues: That’s right. And then the advertisers that were on television were already looking for things like the demographics of your audience, which is something, we didn’t have anything. Well, on the radio because it was cheap. The local Portuguese travel agency would pay a hundred dollars a week to be on that but they weren’t going to pay several hundred to be—and they had to produce the commercial, too, right? Which is another expense. So the business model was almost impossible to work.

03-00:11:46 Warrin: So let’s get back to your Portuguese community activities and the things that you listed. Evidently the first one is the Portuguese-American Political Action. Could you explain what that was and—

03-00:12:02 Rodrigues: Here we are in the seventies and kind of the awakening of the political realities of things. And we had some good examples of people that were involved in politics. And one of them which, it was Joe Freitas, that at that time was the district attorney of San Francisco. And the Portuguese in the local area always had very strong presence in the labor unions with leadership. And so with that and others—so it became a time to when we come together and form an organization that could present a united front of a Portuguese point of view or agenda to influence elections and others. You collect the bonus points at the end. And so I was one of the founding members. The acronym was PAPA. Portuguese-American Political Action. And it was founded in the Bay Area.

03-00:13:07 Warrin: And who were some of the other founding members?

03-00:13:11 Rodrigues: Let’s see if I remember. There was Frank Brass from San Francisco. There was Décio Oliveira. There was three guys from the unions. And now the names are going to escape me. As I said, they escape me very much. One was Frank Sousa, I believe the name. He was the head of the machinists union for the Bay Area. There was Ben Leal, the head of the teamsters for the Bay Area, still alive, lives in Castro Valley. There was Edward Martins, the attorney in Hayward. You probably know him. He’s from the mainland.

03-00:13:57 Warrin: I do.

03-00:13:58 Rodrigues: It was a large group. It was maybe fifteen people and more.

03-00:14:05 Warrin: And what was the intention of the group, or what were the principal activities of this group?

03-00:14:14 Rodrigues: The activities was, we thought that we could develop a representation of the Portuguese community and influence elections and obviously the candidates, using that as a muscle in the areas like Alameda or Oakland or where there was a large Portuguese presence. The problem is that we came to realize that even though we were all Portuguese, you could go from the far left to the far right and there really is no Portuguese agenda. When I hear that the other groups that are still doing, they hang on to either the education because we’re so far behind or whatever, or jobs because we need to be included in the new thing. We couldn’t come up. And I remember one of the things was, there was an election in Alameda and we met to endorse this person. I think it was a sheriff for Alameda County. And it became a big discussion because immediately you could see who was─

03-00:15:24 Warrin: Right, right.

03-00:15:26 Rodrigues: And believe me, it became where there was the Republican side and the Democratic side, and then you could see that that superseded the Portugueseness of the organization.

03-00:15:38 Warrin: Of course when you get down to the nitty-gritty, it’s your political view that counts. A PAC normally has a political outlook before it begins any process.

03-00:15:55 Rodrigues: And that supersedes everything else.

03-00:15:58 Warrin: Of course.

03-00:15:58 Rodrigues: See, but we didn’t. So our way was just Portuguese, right? So we didn’t have that connecting element that superseded. So then after a while it’s just—

03-00:16:10 Warrin: When was it founded? Do you recall how—

03-00:16:13 Rodrigues: I can’t remember. I was going to say early 1970s. Probably less than three years, and then just died of neglect.

03-00:16:20 Warrin: Yeah. I know that you mentioned a founding member and chair at one time of the Cabrillo Savings Bank.

03-00:16:28 Rodrigues: Yes. That was part of the thing, too. It was a group in the—Ed Martins was one of them, Edward Martins, that thought it was an opportunity to open a bank that would cater to the Portuguese clientele. So they founded a bank. I would say it’s probably ’82, ’83. And the bank raised Portuguese money. At that time it was like two and a half million dollars, I believe. And later on when I came to the Bay Area from being in the southern part, I was in Nevada, came to the Bay Area, became part of the board, and the bank did okay for a while. And we had at one time more than one office. There was one in Hayward, there was one in San José and there was another in Mountain View. Where the problem became—so we got squeezed at the time of the big savings and loan debacle. First of all, the United States, the Controller of the Currency and all that, they were not interested in the small places. That was the first thing. They were interested in consolidating the industry into the larger ones. It’s easy to administer. You don’t have to be watching all the little ones. The second part is, the bank invested some of their savings into savings bonds, but there’s a savings bond called a strip where you make the play on investment on the interest rate. But what happens is when the interest rates go the other—opposite direction, the values go down very fast. So when the board made that decision to invest in them, and the interest rate, let’s say, was seven or eight percent, which nowadays is incredible, right—people have to remember in those days it got to 12 percent. So when you go from eight to twelve or ten, for every point you go up, the value of your bond drops by eight or ten percent. So our two million dollars or some in capital kept disappearing. We were down to a million some. And so the federal authority came in and said, “Either you guys have to raise another two-plus million dollars to cover and bring it to the new standards because they changed the standards, or it’s over.” And then it was over.

03-00:19:07 Warrin: So it was over.

03-00:19:08 Rodrigues: It was over.

03-00:19:11 Warrin: And then you closed and people lost those funds, I suppose.

03-00:19:15 Rodrigues: No. The people lost the investment.

03-00:19:19 Warrin: That’s what I meant.

03-00:19:20 Rodrigues: Right, right. Yes, yes.

03-00:19:22 Warrin: Of course, the savings themselves were covered.

03-00:19:25 Rodrigues: They were protected. FDIC. And the government took all—which is the funny part about these things. The government took all the bonds that belonged to the government, and they waited for the full period of ten years and got the full money back. So there was no loss for them. But the shareholders got wiped out.

03-00:19:45 Warrin: Yeah. Were you a shareholder?

03-00:19:47 Rodrigues: Yes.

03-00:19:48 Warrin: We don’t have to go any further than that.

03-00:19:50 Rodrigues: No. It was painful.

03-00:19:52 Warrin: I can imagine. To get into a social aspect, you were president at one time of the IDES Council in San Rafael.

03-00:20:03 Rodrigues: Yes. Back when I just got married, 1970s, San Rafael used to be a very large community of Portuguese, especially if you take into consideration that Marin County was the beginning of the agriculture dairy industry for the Portuguese in California. So there was a large presence of the fraternals in that area. San Rafael used to have a hall. As a matter of fact, I worked there going through high school, cleaning the hall. Three halls. There were three halls in the building. And as it dwindled, the groups sold the hall because there was not enough people interested. One gentleman that I have the fondest memories was my neighbor. His name was Simão Cordeiro. He is descended from people from São Jorge. As a matter of fact, I believe that he came from São Jorge at six months old. And he was the youngest president ever of the SES. He became president of the SES at twenty-some years old. Very phenomenal man. And he got to our family and said, “We need to rebuild this thing.” So I became the president of the IDES Council. My wife became the president of the UPEC. My sisters-in-law, my brothers-in-law, and all that, and we rebuilt it and revived it. And then later on these councils merged with the Novato and now they’re united.

03-00:21:38 Warrin: When you became president, what year more or less would that have been?

03-00:21:41 Rodrigues: My guess is going to be like ’74, ’75.

03-00:21:47 Warrin: So you were about thirty years old—

03-00:21:48 Rodrigues: Yeah.

03-00:21:49 Warrin: —at that time. Anything else to add about your participation up there with the society?

03-00:21:59 Rodrigues: Just that now, as I look back, it was also another time that I was maybe at the right place in the right time, that I could see the old guard disappearing, many of them the owners of the dairies, that now they are studying—the Golden Gate National Park is looking for them. I knew them personally because some of them had been members of it and some of them would be members of the hall. So it was just that changing of the guard. So there was like John Raposo. Then Judge Freitas, which was Manuel T. Freitas’s son. There was Maria Bernardo, which had the place in Tiburon as you walk in. So all these people were just leaving the society. They were just dying.

03-00:22:50 Warrin: Probably the majority were children of the early immigrants.

03-00:22:55 Rodrigues: Correct. Absolutely correct.

03-00:22:58 Warrin: One group that you’ve done a lot of work with and continue is the Portuguese Athletic Club of San José.

03-00:23:12 Rodrigues: Right. I was sports minded in the sense that I always liked playing sports more than watching. As a kid, I would rather go play a pickup game than go watch a big team. I didn’t care for that. Still don’t. And as a matter of fact, when I was fifteen years old I was president of the soccer club for Liceu de Ponta Delgada. And so I was involved with that. So as I got involved here and became a member of the Athletic Club, it became obvious that as man does not live by bread alone, you cannot live by the ball alone, right? They had a very intense soccer program. They had a very social program, but we had no cultural aspect. So in fact I was the first president or vice president of the cultural section. So we started a program of developing a series of symposia, lectures, conferences, whatever it is, during the year in a systematic way. Not just it happened one day because it happened. That was a very heavy program, almost every other month at the latest, with great speakers, with defined themes, and with an audience that attend and report. And the idea then was to showcase not only the things that—I think that was the angle that was very important here, is that we were not just interested in discussing the cultural Portugal only. We wanted to showcase the local talent that knew so much about it. And I know you were one of the participants who were in universities, but there was a way to bring them forth into the middle of the community.

03-00:24:58 Warrin: And before you moved into the cultural aspect, what was the role of the Athletic Club? What did they do?

03-00:25:08 Rodrigues: It started out as a soccer club, pure and simple. It started out as a club on the basement of the IES building in Santa Clara. And then later on the IES had that room upstairs abandoned and they gave it to them. They gave it to them. They rent it to them. And the members came in and renovated it and became a soccer club. And then I think taking a little bit of the guidance from the people that came from the island of Faial and had seen Amor da Pátria. They thought of doing something on a social level. So they became the year-end, the New Year’s ball and the Hawaiian night and all that. So that was a very social thing. And then only later on became the cultural side, including scholarships.

03-00:26:00 Warrin: So approximately what year would it have been that they branched out of it and moved into the IES hall?

03-00:26:07 Rodrigues: I think they came to the IES hall in the late sixties and stayed the same, and then they started the cultural in like ’72, ’73, I can say. And one episode I remember very much of the cultural thing. We had a few dollars, not much, because the club always lived with economic difficulty. And we got a letter from a student saying, “I want to complete my thesis on the Portuguese theme of the dairies but I needed some help with the money.” And I think we had almost $2,000 in our whole account and we sent the money and that became Al Graves’ thesis that later became a book.

03-00:26:50 Warrin: A very interesting book, of course.

03-00:26:51 Rodrigues: And that’s how it started off. And that book came back. Then we became involved with Portuguese Heritage Publications. Here comes Al Graves and says, “Wait a minute. I remember you guys.” He was doing a PhD. And then became a book. But we sent him the money because that’s all the money we had. We thought it was worthwhile doing. And that was correct.

03-00:27:13 Warrin: Did you sponsor any other publications early on?

03-00:27:17 Rodrigues: Yes. The Athletic had their own newspaper. Had a radio program, had an own newspaper, not running daily but it was like quarterly. And for a while, as a matter of fact, it was an insert or an addendum to the Jornal Português that we got this in distribution. And the Athletic also at that time, sort of cultural thing, we had a very strong program. If you played in a soccer team and you go to school, we would provide you with a scholarship of some type. Not enough to pay the whole, even though at that time, as you know, tuition was

minimal compared to today. But we still didn’t have the money. But every player that went to college, we provide some type of scholarship, some recognition.

03-00:27:58 Warrin: So what is the connection between the Portuguese Athletic Club and Portuguese Heritage Publications? Did it sort of split off in some way?

03-00:28:21 Rodrigues: No.

03-00:28:21 Warrin: There seem to be many of the same people.

03-00:28:24 Rodrigues: We knew each other at the Athletic Club, many of us. I was president of the assembly for the Athletic Club. The year before that, Tony Goulart became the president of the board and Décio, Father Macedo. So I knew Joe Mattos. We knew each other in and around that milieu, that avenue. But the Portuguese publications came out not from that. There had been a movement around that there was a need to sometime write the history of the Portuguese, of the heritage of the Holy Ghost Festas in California. And at that time Tony Goulart was with the Chamber of Commerce and he took upon and he became the coordinator to do that. And that was the first edition of that book, came under the logo of the Chamber of Commerce.

03-00:29:24 Warrin: Was that the first publishing activity of the Heritage Publications?

03-00:29:29 Rodrigues: We didn’t exist at that time. And then it became obvious that there was not only an audience but a need to continue that. But the Chamber of Commerce was not the right place. Not that some of the people were not the same. Is that they had a defined role to play and their attention wasn’t to that type of avenue while this needed something that was dedicated just to the publishing.

03-00:29:59 Warrin: Yeah. And cultural rather than political.

03-00:30:01 Rodrigues: Not political. Exactly. And so we separated from the Chamber of Commerce and funded the Portuguese Heritage Publications as an entity of itself.

03-00:30:13 Warrin: About what time? What year?

03-00:30:13 Rodrigues: Yeah, that’s the thing. I should have consulted those numbers. Let’s see. Well, I would say the split probably occurred in about 2000.

03-00:30:25 Warrin: About 2000?

03-00:30:26 Rodrigues: Yeah, about 2002.

03-00:30:27 Warrin: So that’s quite recent, right?

03-00:30:28 Rodrigues: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Heritage Publications is eleven-some years old. That’s it.

03-00:30:36 Warrin: And what was its first publication?

03-00:30:39 Rodrigues: The Holy Ghost Festas. We made a second edition. At that time we also decided that in addition to the—we call it the historical series, which right now we have The Holy Ghost Festas. We have The Portuguese in Agriculture from Al Graves; David Bertão, The Portuguese Whalers; Capelinhos, which is an update of the Portuguese community from the sixties to now. And now the book on the Portuguese churches, The Power of the Spirit. And now we’re putting the final touches on the book on the California politicians, the Portuguese politicians, which will be up in September.

03-00:31:25 Warrin: And who is writing that?

03-00:31:26 Rodrigues: Al Graves is doing that one.

03-00:31:27 Warrin: Al Graves.

03-00:31:28 Rodrigues: Al Graves doing that one. And so it became obvious to us that in addition to that, there was a need to provide a forum for Portuguese writers, either in English on Portuguese themes or in Portuguese itself. The limitation for us, it always has to be California or related to California. So we were not interested in if it was something in Nevada. Like we just did the Portuguese book on the churches. I don’t know if you have been to the Portuguese church in Hawaii, the one in Maui, the round church. It’s a very beautiful church.

03-00:32:13 Warrin: I may have. I’m not sure.

03-00:32:13 Rodrigues: Yeah. It’s the one that’s kind of octagonal. And it was controversial because people wanted to include it, but that’s what we decided. We decided we were going to be California only. There’s all kinds of things going in Nevada and

all that. We just knew that we only had so much span that we could do. And being a published author several times over, we know a little bit of all the amount of blood, sweat, and tears it takes to get to that publication. The people look and say, “Oh, man, it’s only twenty pages,” right? And so going across states. Because Portuguese Heritage Publications also has a peculiarity, or unique, maybe, is that number one is that we are all volunteer. There’s no paid staff. And we do everything ourselves. And number two, our board reflects Portuguese cultural affinity organizations from Sacramento to San Diego. So it’s not like we’re in an office next to each other, pick up the phone and go to the cubicle. So it’s a little more harder to manage. So we had to concentrate on California.

03-00:33:22 Warrin: Does somebody manage it in some way? Is there an overseer?

03-00:33:26 Rodrigues: Whoever becomes the president right now is Henrique Dinis. You become the kingpin that got to make the whole—it’s like the maestro in the orchestra. You got to make it tuned up.

03-00:33:36 Warrin: Doesn’t sound like an easy job.

03-00:33:39 Rodrigues: It isn’t. I did it for a while and I tell you, it isn’t. It requires a lot of time. It requires a different demeanor because I’m not paying anybody anything. It’s not like, “Give me the thing by Monday or I’ll fire you.” So you have none of that leverage. All the leverage you have is the commitment and the worthiness of the project.

03-00:34:07 Warrin: Just goodwill.

03-00:34:08 Rodrigues: That’s all you have to manage on.

03-00:34:10 Warrin: In your closer involvement in these various publications, did you do some research for some of them? Did you write part of it? Did you help the author in some way?

03-00:34:25 Rodrigues: I think I did. I did research for some of the organizations on The Holy Ghost Festas. I worked with David Bertão a long time and kind of polished that publication. I didn’t do anything with the English part. Obviously as English is a second language, I stay away from that part. But I read it as a reader of Portuguese aspect, what is it that I would like also to know in addition to? So I become that friendly editor that nudges the writer to explore more of this. Why is it that—because some things that come upon become kind of matter- of-fact. When you look behind it, there’s a reason, a consequence, so all that

again. And that very often to me is the most interesting part. Not just that the person arrived, but why did he arrive there? So I did that. I wrote a lot in the book Capelinhos. I was a writer on that. And of course I also co-authored a lot in the book about the churches and the clergy.

03-00:35:39 Warrin: And what did that involve, being co-author?

03-00:35:41 Rodrigues: That involved writing the history on a couple churches, and that involved researching the biographies of a lot of priests because when I convinced Father Joe Ferreira to be the co-author, he said, “Ah, it’s going to be like forty-five, fifty-five priests. That’s it.” And believe it or not, we kept scratching, we kept going, and we end up with 112. And there’s a few that I know we didn’t catch on until later. Said, “Oh, my God.” Now, some of them were not very relevant. Some of them the biographies, or not even biographies, are five lines long because there’s very little on them. But what we wanted to do is to register that these people were here. Also wrote a lot of the appendix. Because in a Catholic church, and maybe in others, we talk about the church as a building, we talk about the priests. But there was a lot of work done by the nuns.

03-00:36:43 Warrin: Of course. And not appreciated as—

03-00:36:46 Rodrigues: Oh, no. No, because they don’t get the patina of that. So I wrote a little bit about their role. I wrote a little bit about the role of some of the priests and the organization CASE in providing scholarships for them. So that was my extent. And, of course, I tried to energize Joe Machado and Father Ferreira to keep going. That became my—

03-00:37:11 Warrin: And how do you go about researching the history of the church?

03-00:37:17 Rodrigues: Well, it seems to be very easy because the dioceses have archives. What has happened is that with the problems in the church, the archives of the diocese become very problematic because they are afraid that you are digging for dirt to start some lawsuit about some sexual encounter in there. So getting the cooperation is hard as nails. So it was our ability to get to some groups of some people, the archivists, whatever it is, and get a little information and then go back to the city or to the church and find somebody that’s been there for a long time and says, “Oh, yes, I remember that. I have some pictures.” And, “Oh, I have the program from 1910,” and keep digging this. Joe Machado has been working on this for six years. So it seemed to me in the beginning it was going to be pretty straightforward. You go to there, open the file, go through. “Okay, here’s the church.” No. And then some events also helped. For example, when we did the one on Buhach, it just happened that

they had just opened the cornerstone which had a lot of the information of the early and the committees and all that. So that helped fill that. So it’s a very painstaking—as you know from your research of whalers and all kinds of other things in the West, the Far West. You find little nuggets in places you never thought about, and you never even thought of going there until meandering you end up in that little corner and there it is, what you have been looking for.

03-00:38:59 Warrin: Exactly, exactly.

03-00:39:01 Rodrigues: But you didn’t know it was there. Nobody did. And they didn’t associate. When I read your book and I see the association of the guy with Billy the Kid and all that. Nobody ever knew about it. But you weave through that. And the church was the same thing. The church was also—the size of the diocese being a little careful—is that we were just at the cusp where a lot of— [chirping in the background] My birds just thought it was time to sing.

03-00:39:31 Warrin: Right.

03-00:39:31 Rodrigues: We were just at the cusp where a lot of the Portuguese priests were dying. So we lost Father Oliveira, Father Macedo. You know, Father Bernardo and all that. So we were losing some of that history. You probably remember Father Cordeiro from Five Wounds and all that. So those are all died, and with them went Monsignor Manuel Alvernaz. I mean, we go on. And so if we had done this twenty years ago, there would have been probably even more history. One of the great things that happened in this book was that Father Ribeiro at Five Wounds kept a diary which is like ten books. A daily diary.

03-00:40:14 Warrin: And you had access to it?

03-00:40:15 Rodrigues: And we had access to it. So from that, the Five Wounds were written by Miguel Ávila and Joe Machado. They were the ones that searched that. They could go day to day. We got some money today. We didn’t get it. I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that. But the other churches, some of those things were not available. The priests don’t do that anymore.

03-00:40:35 Warrin: Yeah. And this is the great advantage of either speaking with somebody or reading their diary. You’re not getting dry records. You’re getting things of more interest—

03-00:40:47 Rodrigues: Absolutely.

03-00:40:48 Warrin: —and a broader perspective.

03-00:40:50 Rodrigues: Absolutely. And you get the continuum. You see the mood change, you see the things change. One of them that we worked so hard, Al Dutra, which you know very well from the Portuguese museum, worked very hard with the history of Saint Joseph’s in Oakland. But in there he was able to find some that were in Italian, from an Italian priest. And we had it translated to get some of that flavor. Because for example, one of the festivities around here is the Santo Cristo, which is at São Miguel. There was an association of people from São Miguel. And the first one was done in Saint Joseph’s and then south San Francisco and Buhach and other places. And to go back and find the records, “Oh, yeah, there was this, and what do they call it.” And that was also part of the interesting thing. But getting those original records. Some of them were disposed, thrown away. We also found that—and I understand that the diocese has a lot of expenses, a lot of things to do. You would think that they would have this organized and all. It’s piles and boxes of stuff that are there until somebody will put some time into it.

03-00:42:10 Warrin: And it would be interesting also to see the Portuguese community viewed from an Italian perspective, for instance.

03-00:42:19 Rodrigues: It was. There’s an interesting—like the devotion but not necessarily the amount of money to create—because even today we found out this. You go to some churches and the weekly collections is huge. And the Portuguese church is not as much. They said it is a different stream of income. You go to a regular church and there’s a $5,000 collection every week and that’s it. The Portuguese collection might be $2,000 but then they’ll put the Santo Cristo, put Senhora de Fátima, they’ll put all these festivals which generates thirty, forty thousand each. Or the Holy Ghost. So it is a different way to get there, and it’s interesting to see that from other people looking at that like, how do we— It’s absolutely interesting.

03-00:43:19 Warrin: Yeah. And that’s particularly community-based, and so the church authorities might get a little confused about that.

03-00:43:27 Rodrigues: They do because they want the certainty. “Okay, we got five collections of this. If we project this. Oh, you’re going to be off by so much.” “Okay, how about the June festival brings $50,000.” “Oh, it’s not here, right?” So to them it’s very—and I know that some priests, speaking with them, that very often was a source of not friction but long conversations with the diocese and the finance people because a lot of these churches have mortgages. And they’re more into, okay, $5,000 every week and we know how much it is.

03-00:44:07 Warrin: And the diocese might be more Irish or Hispanic, perhaps.

03-00:44:11 Rodrigues: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. That was another thing that I didn’t realize until we did this book. How much Irish influence was the domination. Now, fortunately we are Portuguese churches. The Irish archbishops of San Francisco—this is, of course, before they broke down and opened—because San Francisco archdioceses used to be all of it up to LA. There was nothing else. Only later on they had Oakland and San José and Sacramento. And Archbishop Ryan and another, Mitty, they were very concerned in having priests that would service the needs of the particular communities. And in the twenties, thirties, the Portuguese community in Alameda was the fourth-largest ethnic group. So they start bringing priests from the Azores. Sometimes were priests and sometimes were seminarians. They would come from the Seminary of Angra and then go to the seminary here for two or three years and then would be put in a parish.

03-00:45:28 Warrin: Oh, that’s interesting.

03-00:45:29 Rodrigues: That’s how they started. It was like a bridge. Angra and Saint Patrick’s. Over 110 priests. If we take away those that were born here and all that, those from the Azores, I’ll bet you that over 60 percent or 70 percent are on that connection.

03-00:45:47 Warrin: But that system died out after a while, didn’t it?

03-00:45:50 Rodrigues: It died for two reasons. One, the community is not in the need that it was. And number two is the Azores itself is not producing the excess of priests that it did in one time. And now where do you see them from? Philippines is the big producer now. From the Azores they don’t have enough priests. Last year the Seminary of Angra did not graduate one. Last year or the year before, did not have one single priest formed.

03-00:46:16 Warrin: Is that right?

03-00:46:17 Rodrigues: They’re down to twenty-three people.

03-00:46:19 Warrin: And people aren’t emigrating either nowadays.

03-00:46:22 Rodrigues: I’m sorry?

03-00:46:22 Warrin: People are not emigrating nowadays.

03-00:46:24 Rodrigues: No, no. But there’s no population growth either. The population of the Azores has stabilized at 250 (thousand) and that’s where it is.

03-00:46:33 Warrin: Much smaller than it was before this big massive emigration.

03-00:46:36 Rodrigues: It was 355, 365, which is more population than the land could really feed.

03-00:46:46 Warrin: So the last one that you listed was the Catholic Association for Seminary Education. Could you describe it and what your role was?

03-00:46:58 Rodrigues: Yeah. Let me start with the organization. Back in the sixties, Father Albano Oliveira, Valdemiro Fagundes from Sacramento, Alvernaz. What was the name, and Carlos Macedo, they got together. And they were students at Angra do Heroismo and they knew that it was a very tough time because in those days you went to the seminary eleven years old and you were in Terceira for the entire nine months. You never came home. There was no money. And they saw the struggle that they went through to survive isolated from the family, so they wanted to do a little bit of money that they could send to the seminarians. Now, they also made a decision they wouldn’t do it to the younger ones because there’s huge turnover because they quit before. They would do the four years, the last four years of school, the theology students. So they started an organization called CASE. It was the Catholic Association for Seminary Education. As the group went along—

03-00:48:06 Warrin: Where did this start?

03-00:48:08 Rodrigues: In the Bay Area. I don’t know where it incorporated. There was one priest from Flores, Father Mariano Sousa, which used to be at All Saints. And when he died, he left his estate to help the students at the seminary in Angra. And then Father Alvernaz also left a large part of his estate to that. So about eight or nine years ago this organization has been functioning. Father Oliveira was the, I don’t know what—I think it was called the finance director for the Diocese of Oakland. Because working non-profits is so complicated nowadays, he prevailed with a bishop to have the non-profit operate under the diocese. But they needed a group to do it. And so when Father Oliveira died, Décio came to me and said, “Gee, we need you to come and join us on the board and become the secretary of the board of CASE.” So CASE now is doing the scholarships for the students in seminary, the scholarships for the Portuguese-American seminarians in California, and in addition to that, to satisfy Father Alvernaz, because he had left some, we also have a scholarship

specifically from his trust that helps university students from the town of Ribeirinha in Pico. Now, Ribeirinha is not even a thousand people.

03-00:49:46 Warrin: And there couldn’t be too many people from—

03-00:49:47 Rodrigues: But right now they have seven students in university and two of them taking medicine in Coimbra. I am—

03-00:49:54 Warrin: And it is because of probably the help of—

03-00:49:56 Rodrigues: Absolutely. I think it helps because, as we all know, investments nowadays with—we cannot take risky investments. We have to be very careful. And nobody gets 3 percent interest rate nowadays, right? So the interests are not good. But I remember sometimes we were sending two and three thousand dollars money to help. That’s a lot of money to help over there. Believe me.

03-00:50:19 Warrin: Yes.

03-00:50:20 Rodrigues: It’s a lot of money. And we were doing seven times. CASE, since it started out, we have sent to all the three groups, we have sent over half a million dollars already.

03-00:50:31 Warrin: So some of these people are not in the seminary, though. You said they were going to—

03-00:50:40 Rodrigues: Only those from Ribeirinha.

03-00:50:40 Warrin: From Ribeirinha, and they can study whatever they want.

03-00:50:43 Rodrigues: Whatever they want.

03-00:50:44 Warrin: And go to Coimbra.

03-00:50:46 Rodrigues: Coimbra.

03-00:50:46 Warrin: That’s very impressive.

03-00:50:48 Rodrigues: We have two in Coimbra, one in Leiria. It’s been one that I watch more because I came from a town there were 2,600 people and one time I was the only one in liceu. My God. And to have seven people in university level to me was staggering. And two taking medicine. Coimbra is a very tough school to get in, as you know.

03-00:51:10 Warrin: Of course.

03-00:51:13 Rodrigues: It’s the jewel. And Manuel Alvernaz, or Monsenhor Alvernaz comes from a long family. The Alvernaz of Pico which, they have a cardinal in the family and a bishop and all that. But he thought that of his money, he wanted to have some that would not go to the church studies but to help people because he was a man that saw much of the youth. As a matter of fact, in this book on the churches, he was the pastor at San Leandro’s. He’s the one that started that YMCA in the big building out in San Leandro. He was very much into the children, and that’s why he got the big award. The President Eisenhower Award, whatever, for his work with youth. Yeah.

03-00:52:06 Warrin: It’s interesting to see what happens when you put a little money in education in Ribeirinha and you end up sending people to the equivalent of Harvard from a little town in the Azores.

03-00:52:23 Rodrigues: And you hit it right on the nail because when we look over here on a country this big with this economics, we talk about this 2 percent, 10 percent. We had these discussions, right? I have been privileged because I am the one that writes the letters and corresponds with the—I don’t want to call it financial aid because these are grants. Okay? And to see this happening in a little town, observe, it’s just staggering. It shows to you what a little encouragement, positive, can do to make people excel.

03-00:53:03 Warrin: Right. Well, I think this is a moment to take a quick break.

03-00:53:06 Rodrigues: All right. I’m going to get a little water for my whistle. Do you want a bottle of water?

[End Audio File 3]

Begin Audio File 4 rodrigues_José_04_05-23-13_stereo.mp3

04-00:00:00 Warrin: So we’re back with a second tape to continue our conversation. Anything else relating to the Portuguese community activities that I didn’t touch upon, that we didn’t talk about?

04-00:00:25 Rodrigues: No. It goes on. There’s all kinds of things that happened over the years. I was very involved with the Portuguese Communities Days, remember when we had the celebration in Hayward?

04-00:00:36 Warrin: Yes.

04-00:00:37 Rodrigues: I was involved with the committees welcoming the ambassador and celebrations, including some of the fraternals’ anniversaries and all that. So I’ve been involved with a lot of that stuff. You kind of can get a—

04-00:01:04 Warrin: Well, we’ve covered the general aspects. But you also had other community activities. Of course, your career was outside of the Portuguese community very much so.

04-00:01:15 Rodrigues: Yeah, it was. It was.

04-00:01:18 Warrin: And you were a member of the board of AmeriCorps. Could you explain what that is?

04-00:01:25 Rodrigues: Yeah. Kennedy had started, President Kennedy, the Peace Corps. So the AmeriCorps was the idea of doing the Peace Corps in the United States. They’re still arguing about why couldn’t more kids work in some areas of the social needs in the United States and get the scholarship money that they could then go to education, earn that, rather than go aboard into some other country. So AmeriCorps was that organization, and it was then broken up into all kinds of districts. And I was on the board of the one for the Silicon Valley. And the idea then was to bring into this group a few dozens of students, of students, possibly students. Most of them were kids that were in the danger zone, disadvantaged, in trouble, whatever it is, and the programming included everything. And some of them, we would help them erase the gang tattoos through our program to providing opportunities for them to work in a positive environment, contributing to the betterment of the community, and at the same time earn credits and that would help them start their school educations, because some of them didn’t even complete high school. So I served on the board with a bunch of people from the Bay Area that—

04-00:03:04 Warrin: It must have been an interesting group if it covered Silicon Valley. There must have been some interesting members that you worked with.

04-00:03:15 Rodrigues: There was. The most interesting member, I must say, is Carl Guardino, which now is the head of the Electronic Manufacturers Association. He’s the biggest

political force in Silicon Valley. The other ones were educators, representatives from school districts that would then help these kids, guide them through. There were people from the medical field. It was an interesting group. It was an interesting time. I really enjoyed it. And the company that I was with also was a very heavy contributor to the company, to them.

04-00:03:52 Warrin: And at that time what was the company?

04-00:03:53 Rodrigues: I was with Green Team of San Jose.

04-00:03:55 Warrin: Oh, okay. And what years was this?

04-00:03:58 Rodrigues: Yeah. That’s the thing, my dates. I would—

04-00:04:01 Warrin: Approximately.

04-00:04:02 Rodrigues: I would think it would be like 1994 to 1997. Those years.

04-00:04:08 Warrin: And you say also you were director for the City Year of San José? That was a special program.

04-00:04:19 Rodrigues: The City Year was a part of AmeriCorps. It was a part of that. The same thing, yeah.

04-00:04:23 Warrin: And the Giarretto Institute.

04-00:04:25 Rodrigues: Well, that was one that came out of left field through one of the board members of the company Green Team. I met a board member of Giarretto Institute. Giarretto Institute was started by Dr. Giarretto in San José, and the idea was how to deal with sexually abused children. And his theory was, you cannot deal with the sexual abuse by just dealing with the victim. You’ve got to deal with both. So this is a very involved program which take any sexual abuse situation, and they would go through counseling and all kinds of things to kind of resolve the situation in the family, because we as board members had to go through part of the counseling, part of the program. And, I’m telling you, this is the hardest thing I ever did because it’s a world that we don’t know. And when you sit there and there’s a seventeen-year-old that has been abused for ten years by family members, it’s like, “That cannot be. This is not happening.” So that was the hardest thing for me, was to go through that. Because you had to understand. And then Giarretto Institute, on top of that,

also ventured out in creating situations to have safe foster homes for those children. So the program expanded and later on was merged into another organization because now it’s just huge. Because the demand has increased, either because there was more of it or more known or people are coming forth. So in San José at that time, Dr. Giarretto had already this whole counseling base, but now it involves that plus the foster care.

04-00:06:31 Warrin: Does it have a new name now?

04-00:06:33 Rodrigues: Yes. It’s Ming Quong. I think that’s the way it’s pronounced now. It’s a Chinese name for point of encounter, I think. It’s based now out of Los Gatos.

04-00:06:49 Warrin: I can understand how you get an abused young person and give them counseling. But how do you get the abuser to participate?

04-00:07:03 Rodrigues: Not easy, and not easy when it gets into a confrontational, when it’s both in the same room. And that was the Giarretto thing. He said, “Until you resolve that issue, you might have something solved or soothe that victim, but that accuser or that perpetrator is going to draw another one and the circle continues, the cycle.” And it was not easy. He had assembled a team of experts, or people that were—how would I say it?—they had the knack to convince people. And these people also had almost two languages. There was the academician or clinician language, but you also had to function with the people, and they understood at that level. And that was the hardest part because that’s the way it tended. That was very hard.

04-00:08:00 Warrin: And what did you do during this time?

04-00:08:03 Rodrigues: On the board, we were to supervise the program, make sure it provided the budget and all that, and raise money for it and raise awareness. That year, in fact, Giarretto was on the Oprah Winfrey show and all that. Our job was to leverage our connections, our knowledge, whatever we could to bring that institution to the forefront, not only as an end for donations, but also a source for programming that people wanted to expose through the media, television or whatever it is, and it became very—

04-00:08:46 Warrin: Has this become a more global enterprise?

04-00:08:49 Rodrigues: Yes, yes. The new organization covers from Silicon Valley to Sacramento. Yeah, it’s huge now. It’s three campuses now.

04-00:09:01 Warrin: It’s still amazing that you can get the abuser to sit in a room with the abused. You’d think that, among other things, they would be afraid of prosecution.

04-00:09:15 Rodrigues: I don’t know exactly how they got to that part. If there was a point of absolution or whatever it is. How they circumvented that I really don’t know. I don’t know.

04-00:09:33 Warrin: Yeah. It sounds like quite an accomplishment.

04-00:09:37 Rodrigues: It was. You walk into the room, into the area with the people. They were very intense, dedicated individuals to work with these children. Some very young. Some very young. And some of them were older people that had come back. Twenty. Older. I mean twenty or thirty. That says, “Wait a minute, this is not right.” And then some of them, they were seeing the second wave of abuse.

04-00:10:03 Warrin: Oh, really?

04-00:10:06 Rodrigues: Yeah.

04-00:10:06 Warrin: Yeah.

04-00:10:06 Rodrigues: We even use the term that it’s incestual, right? Because a lot of them was family. That was the thing that was so strange in my mind.

04-00:10:16 Warrin: And then of course it gets passed down to another generation.

04-00:10:19 Rodrigues: Absolutely. Absolutely.

04-00:10:19 Warrin: Very often.

04-00:10:21 Rodrigues: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

04-00:10:25 Warrin: Well, we’ve covered a lot of material in a couple of days, and before we end, is there anything else that might come to your mind that you would want to record?

04-00:10:40 Rodrigues: No. I want to thank you for taking the time and traveling across the Bay to come up and put up with me for a couple, three hours. I hope that something

out of it comes forward. I’m one of the lucky people that came into the Bay Area at the right time, and I was able to see the growth in the Portuguese community and all the things that were going on, and at the same time I was here in the sixties, which was a terrific time to be in the United States.

04-00:11:11 Warrin: Very exciting.

04-00:11:12 Rodrigues: I was at San Francisco State during the riots and all that, and the new politics. So having all of that to me was like—I was like a drunken sailor in town, you know what I mean? And your careful research and follow the questions and easy to answer and have the conversation, I appreciate it. I know it takes a lot of talent to do that.

04-00:11:39 Warrin: Good. Well, it’s our appreciation, too, and this will be a valuable contribution to our ROHO Portuguese project and I want to thank you again.

04-00:11:45 Rodrigues: You’re very welcome.

[End of Interview]