Legacy by Spencer

Legacy by Spencer - January 2018 Scholarship Essay

Tears rolled down my grandpa’s face as he locked eyes with Nelson Mandela on the theater screen playing Invictus. He turned his gaze to me, and I saw him smile as another teardrop fell to his chin. “No matter how bad things are in the United States,” he whispered, “it’s still the greatest country in the world.”

In this moment, I saw a side of my grandfather I’d never seen before. Sure, I knew he emigrated from South Africa after my mom was born; the way he pronounced “water” was unmistakable. But the movie and our time alone gave me my first window into his life in South Africa.

Although poor, my grandfather grew up privileged because of his skin color. As a teenager, he was troubled by the blatant racism surrounding him at the heart of South African society. His attempts to join anti-Apartheid movements, however, were stymied by his father, who feared that protest would land his eldest son in handcuffs.

For most of my life, I had only known and admired my grandfather as a successful, well-known doctor in America. I wanted to be successful and make a name for myself like him, so independent creative projects were my lifeblood. With the right innovative idea, I thought, I could make it big.

Unfortunately for my parents, I had a wild imagination and a seemingly inexhaustible reserve of energy whenever I locked onto an idea. From a young age, I found myself conceiving of get-rich-quick schemes, founding companies, organizing LLCs, coding video games, and selling websites. But nothing seemed to stick, as my initial love affair with each idea never sustained my commitment. I was failing and flailing.

But when I learned of my grandfather’s experience in South Africa, something changed inside me. I began to understand that he was far more complex than the doting grandpa I knew him to be. I recognized something deeper and more complex than his success in America. In South Africa, he had witnessed terrible atrocities, confronted ethical quandaries, and made difficult choices between his family and his own convictions. Anticipating country-wide violence, he emigrated and rejected his birthright privilege, bettering the future of his family for generations to come. That move gave his life had real meaning; he found purpose.

Perhaps I was receptive to my grandfather’s stories because I had already begun tackling injustice surrounding me. After a pro bono attorney and a friend approached me sophomore year because of my involvement in mock trial, we founded an organization that helps immigrants achieve legal status. The next week, I met our first client: a father who had uprooted his family from Mexico, escaping far graver challenges than my grandpa ever knew. I sat across the table from him, listening to stories about death threats from gang members and the scarring abuse his son suffered at the hands of his maternal grandparents. He and his son entered the country without authorization years ago.

I got straight to work. I dove into Maryland court records and combed through every legal precedent I could find, furiously typing away at the father's affidavit, trying to put his desire for a new reality into words. I spent long days in court and coordinated with clerks from Puebla, Mexico, to Baltimore, Maryland.

By helping people without the tools to help themselves, I had suddenly tapped into an unwavering source of internal motivation—a kind of fervor I had never experienced before. And this same zeal began to creep into my intellectual pursuits. I started interacting with bigger ideas, making efforts to unpack today’s social problems.

After starting an independent study on social impact at school, I now have Jason Saul’s The End of Fundraising open on my bed. Drafts of my opinion piece on the environmental impact of the Whole Foods sale cover my desk, waiting to be published. Transcripts of my interviews with JP Morgan employees and venture capitalists about socially sound investments overflow my drawers. Now, I'm up late focused on the double bottom line—a business’s social returns.

Through working on legal case files and social case studies, I found an outlet to help effect lasting change, an outlet my grandfather could only wish for in South Africa. My efforts finally have real meaning; I, too, have found purpose.

“I look at how you, your sister, and your brother have progressed, and it is the fulfillment of my life,” my grandpa told me. These days, I’m starting to understand what he meant. His whole life was in that move across the Atlantic: the sacrifices he made for his family and the trouble he left behind. I’ve realized that I inherited his drive to fight injustices. By leaving South Africa, he gave me a voice to put that drive into action—a voice too dangerous for him to have on the streets of Johannesburg. Working on cases and evaluating social impact, I’ve come to find meaning in helping to create the equitable world my grandfather envisioned years ago. That’s why my word is legacy.