When Bill and Sue Reighard first started coming to Franciscan University for summer conferences in the late 1990s, they loved listening to the talks and learning about apologetics. Above all, they loved interacting with the students.
“The students who were working at the conferences were always so friendly,” remembers Bill. “They really warmed us to Franciscan.”
In those days, the company they founded, Food Donation Connection, was newly off the ground. The Reighards’ work and their faith have always gone hand in hand. Their company, which coordinates the donation of leftover food from restaurants around the globe to people in need, takes as its motto Jesus’ words in John 6:12, “Let nothing be wasted.”
Year after year, they returned to the conferences, and as their company grew, so did their ties with Franciscan. When their company hit its 25th anniversary, the Reighards celebrated by inviting their entire staff on a tour of the Holy Land with Steve Ray—a speaker they first heard at a Steubenville Conference.
Bill and Sue—who met at Ohio University, where Bill majored in chemistry and biology, and Sue in computer science—wanted to support the students who had welcomed them to Franciscan, so they began donating to the scholarship fund. Then in 2011, they learned about a new program, founded by chemistry professor Dr. Jeff Rohde, that enabled chemistry students to do summer internships at the Chicago based pharmaceutical company AbbVie, where their research would help develop treatment for rare tropical diseases.
The Reighards understood the need for medical advances in under-researched diseases. Their only daughter, Julia, suffered from an uncommon neurological condition called CRPS. Wanting to help, they sent an initial $90,000 donation to fund the program, and they have continued to donate ever since. Their total contribution will soon reach $1 million, but Bill and Sue didn’t realize that until the University told them.
“Our donation is not the story,” says Bill. “The story is all the students who have benefited from the program.”
The Reighards have established a tradition with those students: Every year, when Bill and Sue fly from their home in Tennessee to meet with program coordinators, they also take the students out for a meal.
“It’s been fun meeting all the students and coming to the University,” says Sue. “It’s a neat experience being part of it.”
Helping the students to help others with rare diseases is one way the Reighards have honored the legacy of their beloved Julia, who died of lymphoma in 2019. Amidst her own suffering, Julia was devoted to helping and comforting others who suffered from the disease she had.
Nowadays, the Reighards, who love to travel, can often be found on a plane, heading out to visit family, attend a wedding—or take a group of chemistry students in Steubenville out to dinner.
This past summer, before taking the interns to the Harp and Habit, the Reighards donned white lab coats (“which I hadn’t done since college,” says Bill), and worked beside Monica Calkins ’24, analyzing chemical reactions using equipment they had donated to the lab. Since the Summer Neglected Tropical Diseases Internship Program wrapped up in 2024, the Chemistry Department has, with the Reighards’ support, branched out in several exciting new directions— including building a chemistry start-up business, of which Calkins was the first employee.
“Our core mission has been to give students the opportunity to expand their career potential into science, so those students can go out in industry and carry the message of Christ,” explains Bill. “And I’d say it’s been a success.”
