The legacy we take, the legacy we make.
Grandma and Grandpa Martel were always giving us the stuff they’d collected over the years. Jewelry, souvenirs, polished rocks, and kimonos. In their later years, they seemed to be preoccupied with the desire that their four grandchildren remember them, through these heirlooms.
Both passed away in late 2019.
We didn’t care much for their stuff, but grandma and grandpa were actually pretty cool. Grandpa Joe, a Catholic French Canadian from Connecticut, brought Grandma Atsuko, a Protestant, home from Yokohama after the war. Not accepted by his family in Connecticut, they moved to San Diego where they raised my Dad. They did a really good job with him.
Even though we never appreciated their cherished belongings like they did, I have since often reflected on the legacy they left — in how they lived, how they worked, and the lasting effects of how they raised their two children. But in only a couple more generations, their story will largely be forgotten.
Five Minutes
On June 4, 1961, the nuclear reactor on the K-19, a Soviet submarine, suffered a catastrophic failure. A pipe had burst, and coolant pressure went to zero. In the reactor room, the thermometer maxed out its dial at 140 degrees.
The first of its kind, the Russians’ K-19 nuclear submarine had no backup cooling system installed. Captain Nikolai Zateyev, who briefly considered shooting himself in his cabin, instead organized 22 volunteers to enter the reactor room to weld together a makeshift cooling system.
The reactor room was under high radiation. Since the volunteers would only be protected by raincoats and gas masks, they would enter the room for only five to 10 minutes to complete their part of the work. The first to go in would be 20-year-old Lt. Boris Korchilov.
“I accompanied him to the reactor room door — to his death,” Zateyev recalled three decades later. “And I said, ‘Well Boris, do you know where you’re going?’
“And he said, ‘I know, comrade captain.’”
Five minutes later, after receiving an estimated 10 times the lethal dose of radiation, Korchilov stumbled out of the reactor room, tore his gas mask off and immediately vomited.
Korchilov was followed by additional brigades of men. Each spent a few minutes quickly completing their tasks inside the lethal reactor room until the jury-rigged cooling system was complete. The work was a success, and the reactor did not explode.
Of the 139 crew members on the submarine, all 22 volunteers died within two years.
Clearly, the work of the 22 volunteers was absolutely selfless and heroic. They gave their lives to save the crew. But their heroism would be hidden for decades. Under Soviet order, the accident was kept top secret. The new crew to pilot the K-19 two years later were never informed of the disaster, and not even the family members of the volunteers were notified of their deaths.
There are many such heroes in the world who are never discovered. And those who are known, are all eventually forgotten.
The Greater Purpose
At face value, the story of the K-19 and its crew members is not an example of legacy. But to me, it is the volunteers’ short, five-minute work intervals that serve as an allegory of life itself. Indeed, each volunteer spent his entire life doing his five-minute part of a great work. Then the next volunteer would build on that work. It is the small work of the last guy that is the legacy.
In this sense, each of us gets five minutes of life to do our part in a greater work that spans generations. Before our five minutes, a hundred generations of people came before us. We are the beneficiaries of their legacy, whether they were builders, or destroyers. We may not remember their names. We may not even recognize the work they left behind, but it’s still there for us to build upon.
While in our five-minute lives, we must remember the greater purpose of life — which is the salvation and joy of the entire human family.
As just one link in a long chain of generations, we must find out what our part is! Then we need to engage fully in doing our part, remembering who it is for. That is the legacy we make.
Now that all my grandparents have completed their five minutes, I wonder how much their perspective has changed. Maybe stuff doesn’t matter to them anymore.
One day when I join them in the afterlife, I don’t suppose I’ll care whether I am remembered or not — that is not my legacy. I might only care that I did my part.
– by AJ Martel
Feature image caption: Joe and Atsuko reunited, by granddaughter Jemma Young, 2020.
AJ Martel – Escalante
AJ Martel is the youth coordinator at The Byway, but he is involved in most everything. He and his family live in Escalante, and they love it here! AJ has found Utah’s small towns quite inviting and under-defended, which is why he’s so involved with the paper. What AJ loves to do most, though, is serve his community. That is clear through everything he writes and does for Escalante, Utah.