The news broke last week that the physician most associated with the term “integrative medicine”, Andrew Weil, MD, had donated $15-million to fuel the work of what is now known as the University of Arizona Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. The donation comes on top of $5-million Weil has already gifted the program he founded over two decades ago. In October 1996, I met him during a small symposium on the coverage issues in integration co-sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and Weil’s nascent program. (For perspective on one of the program’s influences, it was held in the first week of work of the individual Weil chose as his program’s first executive director, Tracy Gaudet, MD, now head of the VA’s Office of Patient Centered Care and Cultural Transformation.) A time of beginnings. The huge gift seemed a good excuse to connect with Weil on his generous bequest, and to ask him to muse on developments in an “integrative” field that in 1996 had just been birthed as such. This article reconstructs some of that conversation.