24 FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY / COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
When Chase came to Chris and Kellie with the idea of starting their own foundation, they were more than willing to help, as were Chris Jr.’ s other siblings, Katie and Cody.
According to Kellie,“ Our four children were very close and Chris Jr.’ s loss was devastating.” Kellie added that managing Chris Jr.’ s epilepsy was a family effort, as everyone knew the signs of a pending seizure and how to handle one if it did occur.“ As Chris got older, he could fake it with most people, but he couldn’ t fake it with us. Mom knows!”
“ The week we lost Chris Jr.— I think it was day three— Chase said,‘ We have to do something,’” Chris said.“ He would call me from New Orleans and just say,‘ Dad, we can do this. We can take the pain and do something.’”
And do something they did. In January, the JR Foundation made its biggest, single gift: $ 250,000 to the FSU College of Medicine to endow a professorship in the lab of Sanjay Kumar, Ph. D., to further his epilepsy research. Kumar is now the proud holder of the JR Foundation Endowed Professorship in Epilepsy Research. idea he was doing that kind of research here in Tallahassee, and as soon as I found it, I started reading, researching and then had to let the family know. The Krafts, even Chris Jr, are huge FSU fans, as you can imagine, so I knew it was lining up with multiple boxes we were looking to check, to be able to help out and possibly find a cure.”
Finding a cure and effective treatment for epilepsy is front and center for Kumar.
“ The ultimate goal of my research is to find a cure for temporal lobe epilepsy, which has eluded us for so long,” Kumar said.“ TLE is the most common form of adult epilepsies that has proven intractable to anti-epileptic medications. The realization that TLE can be a neurodegenerative disorder in addition to being a hyperexcitability / hypersynchrony disorder, which has come about from basic research in my laboratory, has allowed us to pursue this disease from novel therapeutic perspectives, bringing us closer to that goal.”
Without question, the gift from the JR Foundation is deeply personal for the Kraft family.
“ I am truly grateful to the JR Foundation and the Kraft family for their generosity in funding research from my laboratory; for their confidence in my abilities to undertake this research, and for selecting me for the endowed professorship in Chris Jr.’ s name and honor,” Kumar said.
It was by happenstance that the Kraft family and Bill Gilbert, treasurer of the JR Foundation, learned that epilepsy research was being conducted just a few miles from their Tallahassee home. They learned about it while talking to a friend at a golf outing who was familiar with the work being done at the College of Medicine.
If you would like to lend your support by making a charitable gift to the endowed professorship, please scan this QR code or visit give. fsu. edu / JRprofessorship
“ I went out and started googling epilepsy research and what organizations help with it,” Gilbert said.“ I put in some key words online,‘ Tallahassee, Florida, FSU, State of Florida, South Georgia,’ etc., and that is how I came about Dr. Kumar’ s page. I had no
Top photo: Sanjay Kumar, at left, visits with Chris and Kellie Kraft. Bottom photo: Posed with a giant check for $ 250,000 are, from left, Dean Alma Littles, M. D., Chris and Chase Kraft, Sanjay Kumar, Bill Gilbert and Kellie Kraft.