Story

A gift of Grace: How one woman's legacy is powering MND research

Published: 12 December 2025

When Eileen Grace Bignall lost her voice, she refused to lose her spirit.

Known simply as "Grace" to most who knew her, she was one of twelve children raised in a small dairying community in northern New South Wales. Born during the Depression and coming of age through WWII, resilience and optimism were stitched into the fabric of her life. Hard work came naturally, but so too did laughter, music and faith.

Grace Bignall, in her teaching years (left) and following her MND diagnosis (right)

Grace spent 37 years as a schoolteacher, nurturing generations of children in Gunnedah and later in Port Macquarie. She taught with energy, humour, and when she wasn’t in front of a classroom, she was at the piano, accompanying school choirs, musicals, and assemblies with the same warmth that marked her teaching. For hundreds of children, Grace was the sound of music and belonging.

Then, in her late years, came a diagnosis that changed everything. MND stripped Grace of her voice, a cruel irony for someone who loved conversation and slowly took away her ability to play, walk, and move.

Even as her world narrowed, Grace’s faith and composure never faltered. In her final weeks, she took joy in small things: sunshine on her face, blue skies, the company of her family.

As MND began to reshape her life and the lives of those around her, Grace moved into aged care. There, as her voice faded, so too did much of her agency, a reality faced by many living with the disease.

Determined that others might one day have a different experience, Grace made a quiet but powerful decision. From her modest estate, she arranged a series of donations to MND research, not as an act of charity, but of conviction.

She believed that research was the path to progress, a way to turn pain into purpose. Her daughter Robyn remembers her saying that a gift to science was “a way of making a positive out of a negative."

Grace passed away before knowing exactly where that donation would lead. But in 2024, her legacy found its home in an MND Australia Innovator Grant awarded to Professor Peter Catcheside, a world-recognised sleep and respiratory physiologist at Flinders University.

Professor Catcheside’s work examines how MND affects breathing during sleep, a vital area of research aimed at improving quality of life and potentially extending survival for people living with the disease.

His project builds on a growing body of Australian-led research into sleep monitoring, early detection, and non-invasive ventilation, areas that translate rapidly from laboratory to bedside.

With support from the Grace Bignall Innovator Grant, Professor Catcheside and his multidisciplinary team at Flinders University are developing Medbug, a new device that could transform how breathing problems are detected and managed in people with MND.

 The system uses a slim motion-sensing strip that sits on top of a mattress, paired with a bedside device to record breathing motion and sound.

Using advanced respiratory analysis and machine learning, it can automatically track and assess breathing quality, snoring, and airway obstruction without the need for cumbersome wires or overnight hospital studies.

Importantly, the project also involves people living with MND and their carers in co-designing the device to ensure it is comfortable, practical, and meets their real-world needs.

For Robyn, the connection between her mother’s generosity and this work is tangible.

Grace’s belief that research could one day lighten the burden for others is now being realised through every data point, every discovery, every incremental improvement that helps someone breathe a little easier or sleep a little longer.

It’s a reminder that every donation, no matter its size, is not just a transaction, but a continuation of someone’s story.

Eileen Grace Bignall’s life was shaped by teaching, music, and kindness. In death, her legacy is helping others find time, time to talk, to breathe, to live.

Read more stories about life with MND and the research to develop new treatments in the latest edition of Momentum.