“How Do You Want To Be Remembered?” . . . “What Legacy?”

In the first week of April 2024, I attended two back-to-back funeral services at Burma Camp on Friday, April 5, and the following day April 6, at Anyako in the Volta Region.While the Burma Camp funeral was to see off 79-year-old Gp Capt Fred Twum-Danso (Rtd), an engineer of the Ghana Air Force, the Anyako funeral saw off the 93-year old proprietor of the popular “Keta Chop Bar,” in Takoradi, Madame Daavi Glover Attipoe.Between 1994-1996 as Lieutenant- Colonels (and equivalents), Gp-Capt Twum-Danso, the late CDS Vice-Admiral Quashie, the late Brig-Gen PK Opoku and I, were the four Ghanaian Directing Staff (Lecturers) who taught at the Nigerian Armed Forces Command and Staff College in Jaji-Kaduna, Nigeria.

In this Exchange Programme, Nigeria also had, and still has four Directing Staff teaching in the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College at any one time.Daavi was an in-law whose early entrepreneurial acumen led her to Takoradi to start a “chop-bar” business after her basic education at Ho!Interestingly, while the officiating minister at Burma Camp had as his theme, “what legacy will you leave behind?” the Anyako minister asked, “How do you want to be remembered?”The questions reminded me of the two American Kennedy brothers.Kennedy BrothersTwo brothers who made significant statements for which they are remembered are former President of the USA JF Kennedy, assassinated on November 22, 1963, and his Attorney-General and younger brother Senator RF Kennedy who was assassinated on June 6, 1968.At the foot of his grave at the Arlington National Cemetery, Washington DC where a perpetual flame glows, President Kennedy’s famous words are inscribed as follows:“My dear American!

Ask what you can do for your country!”Equally poignant are the words of Senator Robert Kennedy who said,“Some people see things as they are and ask, why?

I dream things that never were and ask, why not?These two pithy statements by the two brothers have etched them into history books as people who selflessly paid the ultimate price in a cause they believed in, for the benefit of their country, the USA.While some have etched their names in history, being remembered for the good legacy they left, others are only remembered for the negative legacy they left!In 1648, Oliver Cromwell, then a Colonel in the British Army, led a group to stage arguably the first coup d’etat in British history by overthrowing/executing the monarch King Charles 1, and replacing the monarchy with a Republic.  Ten years later, Cromwell’s skeleton was exhumed, tried and executed.

Indeed, his grave is unknown.As if the two preachers at Burma Camp and Anyako had coordinated and rehearsed their sermons, both talked about Selflessness, Integrity and Humility as some of the most important attributes in any successful leader or nation.

Quoting extensively from the Bible, they both cited the selflessness of Christ which enabled him to offer himself as a sacrifice for mankind.DiscussionAn inscription at the entrance of a cemetery reads, “lead a good life, so that we don’t have to tell lies about you in your tribute!”Generally, Ghanaian culture does not allow anything negative to be said about the dead, even in that is the truth.

They were both described as honest, selfless, and with integrity.