When David Greulich lost his wife of 53 years, he knew he wanted to create a family memorial in her honor. 

Deanna’s death was partially due to dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing, which she developed after having multiple back surgeries and 
neck surgeries. 

“In grieving for Dee, only positive action would power the healing process,” Greulich (ME’67) says. “I intended on creating a memorial to honor her commitment to others as a registered nurse, but I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.” 

While researching dysphagia, Greulich kept stumbling across work by Georgia Malandraki, professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences and research director of the Imaging, Evaluation, and Treatment (I-EaT) of Swallowing Research Laboratory at Purdue. The lab’s faculty and staff conduct research to improve the health and quality of life for those with dysphagia.  

Greulich reached out to Malandraki over email and later visited the I-EaT Lab.  

“Dysphagia is a terminal ailment,” Greulich says. “After talking with Georgia and the lab, I understood that their focus is to make whatever life the patient has as good as it can be. Whether that’s 10 years or one week, it doesn’t make adifference.” 

Malandraki mentioned that the lab was having difficulty garnering funding for a device they were developing to improve the therapy process.  

“It looked like there was good near-term potential and many long-term opportunities for development,” Greulich says.

“It was not a ‘one and done’ effort. There was promise for the concept to iterate and become better and more useful over time. In other words, it was a seedling that needed to grow.” 

Budgeting for charity was a corner- stone of the Greulichs’ marriage. Whether they were donating to their high schools  

and colleges or their church and other charitable organizations, they believed that “giving to others was key.” 

So it was only fitting that Greulich honored his wife’s memory through philanthropy. He established an unrestricted gift and the Deanna M. Greulich, RN Memorial Endowment to provide ongoing support to the I-EaT Lab.  

Initially, he intended for the gift to lead to products and procedures, but he decided to increase and redirect the endowment from research to scholarships.  

“We need people trained and educated,” Greulich says. “I want to fund the scholarships because I want to grow people who do good things. I figured that’s where the leverage is going to be.” 

With five endowments at Purdue, Greulich’s philosophy is to give with a purpose, and he wants to encourage others to do the same—even if that means beginning with $500 and growing the amount over time.  

“I want to be an example for people of ordinary means to do things bigger than they ever imagined.”