A Note From The Founder
How Legacy was born.
On September 2, 2023, my first son was born.
Two weeks later, my father called to tell me he had stage 4 liver cancer. He’d been diagnosed six months earlier and kept it from us through the pregnancy. The doctors were giving him weeks.
I couldn’t fly out. My wife was two weeks postpartum, a first-time mom, and we had no family in Redding. I stayed.
My dad spent his last weeks in a Catholic in-home hospice. They prayed for him, cooked for him, loved him. One Friday afternoon we had what turned out to be our last conversation. He was at peace, ready for what he called the biggest transition of his life. We talked about God. We made plans for the visit I had booked the next week. He told me he loved me.
My dad.
Julio Antonio Marrero
March 2, 1965 to October 1, 2023
Legacy Builders Alliance is dedicated to the life, love, memory, and legacy of Julio Antonio Marrero.
In Loving Memory
He went unconscious Saturday. He died Sunday. My flight was Monday. There was no funeral. He was cremated and his ashes were shipped home to Redding. I held my one-month-old son and could see, in him, the whole arc of a family: my dad’s life, mine, his. What we’d been given. What we leave behind.
I joined a GriefShare group. They asked us a question I haven’t been able to put down:
How can you use your grief to make a positive impact in the world?
I’m a financial advisor. I know what it looks like when families have to make money decisions in the middle of grief, and how much harder it is when nothing has been prepared. So I walked into a Redding funeral home and met Heather. I told her my story; she cried with me. I offered to help her grieving clients navigate the financial side.
Then I realized I didn’t have to wait until someone was dying. I could help people prepare, so when the hardest day comes, their families are free to grieve.
I started with seniors. Met Maria at Sundial Assisted Living. She introduced me to people. They introduced me to more. Eventually it hit me: if we got everyone in the same room, we’d have something bigger than a referral group. We’d be a team, committed to each other, to our community, and to work that outlasts us.
That’s how Legacy Teams was born. The Legacy Conference came next. Then Legacy Builders Alliance.
We’re still evolving. But every part of it traces back to that month: holding my son, after losing my dad.
JC Marrero, Founder
