The cemetery at Alcanede, in the district of Santarém, is the resting place of Maria Gertrudes Manuel, Dr. Manuel’s great-grandmother, who died on January 26, 1946. In Catholic tradition a cemetery is blessed ground, and the old Portuguese name for it, campo santo, means holy field. Her son, Joaquim Manuel, Sr., had left the family village of Xartinho for the United States in 1919, and from America he sent money so that his mother would be properly buried. He later returned to visit her grave faithfully every year, and the original stone still carries the words he placed there, eterna saudade de seu filho [eternal longing from her son].
Four generations of the family have returned to her grave: her son, Joaquim Manuel, Sr.; his son, Joaquim (Jack) Manuel, Jr., who came to Portugal in August 1975 to lay flowers on his grandmother’s grave, the visit that took him to Rio Maior; Dr. Manuel and his brother David, who first stood there with their grandparents in the summer of 1978; and Dr. Manuel’s daughter Rosa Caterina. Cousins from Portugal and from the Duarte branch of the family in Brazil have come as well. On September 27, 2025, Dr. Manuel restored the grave as her great-grandson, setting her photograph in the stone beside an image of Our Lady of Fátima and adding the inscription Com eterna saudade de Paul Christopher Manuel, Boston, Massachusetts.
