Matt and his team travel to nearby Mechanicsville, Virginia to help an elderly couple downsize into a smaller home. Their clients are Johnny and Lillian Lambert who are well known in the area. Johnny’s family has run a successful catering company in Richmond for years and Lillian is the first African American woman to graduate Harvard Business School. They need Matt’s help to make sure some of their most prized possessions don’t get lost in the move.
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For Johnny that means cherished items that remind him of his family. Lillian on the other hand wants to find some documents that have a deep emotional meaning to her. One is a promissory note showing she paid off her student loan to Harvard and the other is the deed to her family farm her dad bought in the 1920’s. A time when very few African Americans owned land.
Matt knows how valuable these items are to the family and begins to panic when he can’t find them all at the house. That’s when the Lamberts inform him of a second location where some of them may be. It seems that Johnny’s mother’s house in the country has long been used by the family to store personal belongings. The house and adjacent barn turn out to be a treasure trove of vintage furniture, antique silver, catering items and more. For Matt and his team, it’s like stepping back in time.
Inspired to learn more about his client’s family history Matt meets with a genealogist and even travels to a local courthouse to dig through the archives. He not only wants to find the Legacy List items but offer up information that Johnny and Lillian may not have known. It’s a powerful moment when Matt reunites Johnny and Lillian with their prized possessions and offers them insight on their past that shows them just how far they’ve really come.