Man Leaves 480 Acres of Land in His Will to Help Fund Alzheimer’s Research
Man Leaves 480 Acres of Land in His Will to Help Fund Alzheimer’s Research
Cara Lynn ShultzWed, November 11, 2026 at 4:24 PM UTC
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Arnold SwanbergCredit: Dignity Memorial -
Arnold Swanberg gifted Montana farmland, estimated to be worth $1 million, in his will to the Weissman Hood Institute
His donation will help support research into Alzheimer’s disease
The land could eventually help study agricultural workers’ risk of neurodegenerative diseases
Groundbreaking Alzheimer’s and dementia research is underway — all thanks to the generous gift of a man who donated 480 acres of land in his will.
Great Falls, Mo., native Arnold Swanberg was 78 when he died in October 2024. But although he had since moved to Washington, “he always maintained a deep interest in his roots in Montana,” former Great Falls Mayor Randy Gray, one of Swanberg’s closest friends, told KRTV. “You can take the kid out of Montana but you can’t take Montana out of the kid.”
It’s why Swanberg kept Montana in mind in his will: When he died, he gifted two parcels of land to the Weissman Hood Institute. Formerly the McLaughlin Research Institute, it’s a biomedical research institute that works on brain and neurodegenerative diseases. As Swanberg specified in his will, the land is “to be held as an endowment to fund Alzheimer’s research,” the institute said.
The Weissman Hood Institute (formerly known as the McLaughlin Research Institute for Biomedical Sciences) in Great Falls, MontanaCredit: Google Maps
“Arnie’s family, unfortunately, had some propensity to neurodegenerative diseases. So he had a personal interest in that,” Gray, who sits on the institute’s board of directors, told KRTV.
The donated 480 acres of farmland includes parcels south of the Great Falls airport and north of Benton Lake in Teton County. It’s estimated to be worth $1 million.
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Although Swanberg wasn’t a farmer, he leased the land to those who wanted to work it. “Arnie, by the way, became a good friend of those farmers that run that land,” Gray told the outlet. “And again, that’s how he maintained his connection with Montana.”
Along with managing his family’s real estate, Swanberg was an avid photographer who published a magazine called Flight Line, about military aircraft. “He went around the world and took photographs of military aircraft and then published those photographs,” Gray said.
For now, the land will remain farmland, with the Institute saying that the profits from leasing it will go directly to fund Alzheimer’s research at the Institute’s Center for Integrated Biomedical and Rural Health Research (CIB-RHR).
A scientist looks through a microscopeCredit: Getty
“It gives us a cushion in our endowment funds where we can be much more nimble than we could have been without that land,” Gray said, adding that it may end up being the location for research on the link between agriculture work and neurodegenerative diseases.
“Farmers, for example, are more prone to develop Parkinson’s, and they think it may have something to do with, you know, regularly being around herbicides and pesticides,” Gray said. “We’re focused on that now. So Arnie’s land may end up as an actual, who knows, test plot for doing some of those kinds of things.”
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Source: “AOL Breaking”
