Joe Jantke was served on the St. Louis Legacy Retreat® in July 2025. He shares how the life-changing experience impacted his family.
Some Background
The mission of Inheritance of Hope is to “inspire hope in young families facing the loss of a parent.” They are not solely dedicated to cancer but rather terminal illnesses of all kinds. No words can fully describe the organization better than they can, so click on the link above to learn more. Here I’m going to tell you about our weekend with them on their Legacy Retreat® in St. Louis.
Note: I am purposefully being somewhat vague as I feel that anyone reading this who might qualify for this retreat, should not have it spoiled for them. There is much more that made this weekend amazing, but again, this is high-level so as not to spoil it for future attendees.
Friday

The photos above are the main lobby area where a light show is projected onto the ceiling every hour–a different light show, too. After being blown away, we received itineraries, our welcome bag, then shown to our room. The welcome bag consisted of gifts for the family, a book by Kristen Milligan, the co-founder of Inheritance of Hope, our shirts and nametags for the weekend, and more. We also met our two volunteers that would be with us all weekend–and I mean all weekend. They were amazing!
Saturday
In addition to the fun I’ll describe below, there were also professional photographers around snapping candid shots and posed photos. After lunch, we had about 4 hours to explore the rest of the hotel complex with our volunteers. You might think that 4 hours for a hotel exploration is a lot, but it’s not any old hotel. If you’ve ever been to Navy Pier in Chicago, it is most similar to that. There is an aquarium, an indoor ropes course, restaurants, a ferris wheel, and more. Everyone had a blast, even though it felt like 100 degrees outside.
Creating memories at the St. Louis aquarium.
At night, we had Parents’ Night Out and Kids’ Night Out. The kids and volunteers headed to Dave and Busters while the parents went to dinner. It was nice and relaxing, and we even had an hour to relax before the kids came back.
Kids Night Out
Sunday
I will say that the entire organization was amazing and so generous. Their goal was to alleviate the stress and burden of a terminal illness and honestly, aside from my physical limitations, they did just that. Our volunteers Dawn and Zach were perfect, amazing and more than we could ever ask for. It’s hard to say something is life-changing and actually live up to it–but the retreat did and more. I can’t thank Inheritance of Hope enough for the perfect weekend.
-Joe