On June 6 2015 the Chinese Historical Society of America in conjunction with Stanford's Chinese railroad worker research project code a first-ever conference on campus to discuss the role those workers had in building the Transcontinental Railroad this year marks a 150th anniversary of the first Chinese laborers being hired to complete one of the greatest engineering feats in United States history a sold-out crowd which included more than 50 descendants of railroad workers attended among them was Russell Lowe of La Jolla California well it's my great grandfather whose name was hung libel who worked on the Transcontinental Railroad and the story that my great-uncle told great uncle's his son who was that his father and his brother came over to work on the trans continent on the railroad and the detail that's quite compelling is that the uncle lost an eye where they are building the snow sheds and a blasting accident we know this because the son of the road worker Kim lived to be 100 years of age and at his 100th birthday party my sister Laurel went up to him with her video camera and head and said I'll go Kim please tell us about your father you never talked about him so he did he spontaneously without any preparation sat down and started giving it a speech about the Central Pacific Railroad and at the end he says my father came over my uncle came over and unfortunately my uncle uh Stan died in a blasting accident building the snow shuts so that was kind of the first we were aware of this part of our family history my dad is the grandson of the railroad worker and my dad learned from I guess from his his grandmother that when hung Leo was building the railroad he found himself on the middle that long trestle we've all seen the photograph and he turns around and he sees the locomotive bearing down on him and because he's in the middle he can't run fast enough to get through there ends so his solution was to jump over the side and hang on to the railroad ties of train rumbles by so it's a great story and the other part of the story that's really quite important was that he found a wife which was hard to do at the you know after the 1882 there are almost no women the ratio of Chinese men to women about that time was 27 men to one woman so most days Chinese workers died as bachelors or perhaps they went home but in his case he went to the Cameron house and he was grill he was interviewed not long before he met anybody and they wanted to know about his personality his you know honesty his integrity and his religion and eventually they gave him permission to meet one of the young girls - Tommy Inge and they were married in 1888 and had five children one of their children was my grandmother there are now a hundred descendants of Heung LAN one Tom Shean a hundred of them and we would not be here except for their courage and their ability to overcome all that hardship and I think quite frankly it made us who we are it made us stronger and I think that if you kind of follow the generations you see this courage and this so-called right stuff that keeps popping up as I saw it my dad I thought my dad was a World War two hero he would never put it in those words he would be embarrassed if I said that but he was a World War two hero and every sense of the word he was on Saipan he was part of the invasion of Saipan worth 30,000 men died and he gets passed on further and I see it in and my cousin Courtney who is a female at 15 fighter pilot only there a few and the whole world and she's one of them she has that right stuff and my son Ryan who we were off EXCI out at San Simeon and it was a very rough day on the beach there the surf was huge and all of a sudden we see a woman and she's frantically waving what coentrão wasn't going on and turned out that her husband and her son were being swept off into the ocean by the trip courtesy or about a quarter mile off and she'd know what to do we're looking all around for her son we couldn't find these ten years old I finally spotted him he's swimming out to these people and he saved up he rescued these people well it seems to be a movement right now to get the railroad workers it's a long overdue recognition when you see this taking place what's your reaction my reaction is it's good it's positive I don't know how they would react interestingly because I think for them probably it was really a job they were trying to make money and survive and send money home but I think it's good not only for the Chinese but it's good for America it's good that we all recognize what the minorities in this country contributed because it was really so much they built this country but I think as the point I made is the real legacy of these people are in us it's the genes they left behind and it's what we're all accomplishing now these many years later