When Jack Stacey’s beloved wife of 40 years, Aimee, died of motor neurone disease (MND) in 1986, Jack, an oil company executive based in South Australia, devoted much of his energy, time and resources to supporting the South Australian MND Association. Through this Association he met Dr Roger Pamphlett, an MND researcher in the Faculty of Medicine, and a friendship developed. Jack also felt that Roger’s research offered the greatest hope for discovering the cause and hence a cure for MND.

“Our research involves examining how MND could be caused by changed genes in the brain,” says Roger. “We can do this because Australia has a national blood DNA bank for people with MND and also because people in Australia have been generous in donating their brain tissue for research. This unique resource allows us to compare the DNA in the blood with the DNA in the brain tissue.

“There are new ways of looking at all the genes in the entire genome. However, gene chips for this are extremely expensive. The Jack Stacey bequest enables our team, among other benefits, to access this new technology and do in minutes what previously took us months.”

In addition to gifts donated during his lifetime, when Jack Stacey died early in 2004, he left a bequest of $520,000 dedicated to the MND research being carried out by Dr Pamphlett and his team.

Jack Stacey’s daughters, Diana Croft and Alison Barr, who administer the bequest, describe the generosity of their father: “Dad was in a financial position to invest money in charities close to his heart and he was a man who wanted to make a difference.”

“His generosity extended beyond monetary support to helping many people and organisations in a practical way. We will keep Dad’s personal legacy alive by following the development of Roger’s research and we look forward to receiving progress reports.”