Every organization has an official history: the dates, the names, the milestones recorded in minutes and newsletters and annual reports. But the real history of the Philippine American Bar Association lives somewhere else. It lives in the stories of the lawyers who showed up to the first meetings, who argued over bylaws in borrowed conference rooms, who wrote personal checks when the treasury ran dry, and who kept this organization alive through the difficult years because they believed in what it stood for.

As PABA marks its 50th anniversary, we are committed to capturing those stories before they are lost.

The PABA Oral History Project is a series of long-form interviews with the people who built this organization. Each piece is a conversation with one of PABA’s consequential leaders, edited for readability but written to preserve the subject’s voice and personality.

The series will grow throughout PABA’s anniversary year and beyond. We invite you to read, to share, and to reach out if you have a story of your own that deserves to be told.

Arnold Pamplona interviews retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mel Red Recaña for the PABA Oral History Project in the courtroom of Judge Julian C. Recaña, Los Angeles Superior Court, March 24, 2026.

Interview No. 1

Mel Avanzado
Founding President and CEO, PABA Foundation
Former Member, PABA Board of Governors

If you ask anyone who has been involved with PABA over the past few decades, Mel Avanzado’s name will come up quickly, and usually with a smile. A longtime member of PABA’s Board of Governors, Mel was one of the key figures who formalized the organization’s governance structure in its early years, and the driving force behind the creation of the PABA Foundation, the 501(c)(3) that has awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships to Filipino American law students. He is also an accomplished trial attorney, the founder and principal of The Avanzado Law Firm, APLC, and a consistent voice for increasing Filipino and Asian American representation on the California bench.

In this conversation, Mel talks about his early years with PABA, the founding of the PABA Foundation, the time he testified before the California Commission on Judicial Appointments on behalf of then-Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, and what he hopes the next fifty years hold for the organization he helped build.

Interview conducted March 15, 2026, in Arcadia, California.

Read the full interview