In the hours after West Point cadet Peter Zhu was declared brain dead from a February skiing accident, his devastated parents managed to take emergency legal action in an attempt to carry on his legacy.

“When Peter was alive, he often told us how he wanted children of his own one day, and that he wanted to give us grandchildren,” they wrote to a judge in Westchester County in a March 1 petition aimed at winning the right to have their dead son’s sperm extracted and frozen for possible use with a surrogate mother.