When Boston Globe reporter Gloria Negri died in 2017 at the age of 91, she left a legacy as a trailblazing female reporter in a world of male journalists.

For more than 50 years — during the decades when women in newsrooms were scarce — she covered many of the epoch-making events of the 20th century, from race riots, the Vietnam War, and the Apollo 11 moon landing, to Ted Williams’s legendary homer in his final at-bat at Fenway Park.

Now’s she’s left another legacy: Almost half of her estate — a bequest of $1 million — will go to Globe Santa. It is the largest financial donation ever made to the 68-year-old nonprofit, a Boston Globe Foundation program that provides and distributes holiday toys and books to disadvantaged children across Greater Boston.

“We are over-the-top thrilled,’’ said William Connolly, the program’s executive director. “This will ensure Globe Santa will be sustained over years to come and brighten the holiday season for every child who asks Globe Santa for holiday gifts.’’

Boston Globe Media chief executive Linda Henry said she and the Globe Santa team “were deeply moved by Gloria’s generous bequest.’’

“Gloria is a legend in our newsroom . . . and I’m so grateful for her leadership and dedication to serving our community,’’ Henry said.

“Her support speaks volumes about her character and her compassion for our neighbors in need.’’

It’s an extraordinary bequest from a single woman living on a modest reporter’s income. But Negri lived frugally and was a good saver, say those who knew her well.

She was also famously indecisive. Negri prepared a simple will, according to attorney Stephen Corsaro, of Tufankjian, McDonald, Doton & Sacchitella, which handled her estate. Rather than decide precisely how her assets should be allocated, Negri designated three longtime Globe colleagues and friends as her personal representatives and requested they do it for her, “in their discretion.’’

She asked that their decision align “with what they feel are my intentions,’’ adding: “I know that they will choose a charity or charities that I would choose to support.’’

Her three representatives are all former editors of the Globe’s Spotlight investigative team: Stephen Kurkjian, Walter V. Robinson, and Thomas Farragher.

Farragher, who lived about a mile from Negri in Scituate, said he assisted her in a variety of ways, such as driving her to work if her car broke down.

“We were a mutual aid society,’’ he said. “That’s where it all started. We were work buddies who became friends.’’

Ultimately, she became a quasi-member of the Farraghers’ family. Negri doted on their kids, who mowed her lawn and shoveled her snow.

The Globe was Negri’s other family.

“We all lived in the same big room,’’ said Robinson, meaning the bustling former newsroom in Dorchester where Negri labored over stories, often ending her workday by eating dinner in the Globe cafeteria before heading home.

“Here was a woman whose life was her journalism, and she loved kids,’’ Robinson said. “It shows up in her writing, particularly when she wrote about disadvantaged kids.’’

Her defining 1995 story about the courage and optimism of severely disabled students at the Massachusetts Hospital School in Canton, for example, “didn’t leave a dry eye in the state,’’ then-Globe columnist (and later editor) Brian McGrory wrote in a tribute to Negri when she retired in 2012, after 53 years at the newspaper.

Although she could be eccentric and prickly, Kurkjian said, “She was as good a reporter as I knew in that newsroom. She was not interested in the salacious or the criminal. She wanted to hear your side of the story.’’

Her prose was disarming and unassuming, a style evident as far back in her career as 1959, when she rather presciently wrote a Globe Santa story about three families in dire need.

“This is a story about a little blind girl who ‘saw’ last Christmas, of a small boy who didn’t want Christmas to come, and of 15 children who did, but almost didn’t have it,’’ Negri’s story began. There was a 6-year-old girl who lived in “a dark world that did not exclude beauty’’; and a fatherless boy stricken with polio who was “so miserably unhappy he wouldn’t allow his mother to ask Globe Santa’s help for his five brothers and sisters.’’

There was also a family with 15 children whose tenement had burned down, although they continued to live in the shell of the building “because no one would rent to a family of 17.’’

But in Negri’s telling, Globe Santa saved the day for them all, including the embittered boy.

“Perhaps it was the anguished expressions on the faces of his brothers and sisters as they returned to an unheated, toyless, and joyless house last Christmas that softened him,’’ she wrote.

“Gloria had an astonishing ability to connect with people, to bring them into a room or a place so they could see what she saw,’’ Robinson said.

Kurkjian, Robinson, and Farragher met many times after Negri’s death to mull over bequest options. Globe Santa seemed an obvious choice.

Since its beginning in 1956, the Globe Santa program has provided more than 3 million children of all backgrounds with gift packages containing toys, books, and games. When donations of other items are received, such as warm winter gear and school supplies, they are included in the packages.

“We always fulfill every request made in the areas we serve, a promise that is core to our mission,’’ Henry said. “We know that these gifts are a positive self-esteem boost for the children who receive them, and we know that we are building trust and positive reassurance for the families we serve.’’

She added: “As we approach our seventh decade of service, we are hoping to expand our reach to more cities and towns within Massachusetts, a goal that Gloria’s gift will help support, along with the generosity of our donor community.’’

Negri’s gift to underprivileged children seems fitting, given that she knew of their plight all too well.

Details are sketchy, but she was born in Providence, her father was out of the picture, and her mother died when she was a teenager. Though she may have had a sibling, Farragher said, “Gloria presented herself as being an only child.’’

By the time she went to Brown University she was a ward of the state, basically without parental guidance. Brown was “a life raft for her,’’ Farragher said.

Other beneficiaries of Negri’s estate are the New England First Amendment Coalition, which received a bequest of $818,125; the Scituate Library Foundation, which was gifted $157,192; and the Tom Winship Journalism Fund at Northeastern University, named for the Globe’s late longtime editor, which received $50,000. The fund provides opportunities for students who might not be able to pursue journalism without assistance.

“We are thrilled to be able to continue Gloria’s legacy of journalism,’’ said Justin Silverman, executive director of the New England First Amendment Coalition, which works to protect First Amendment freedoms and the public’s right to know.

Silverman said Negri’s gift will help support and expand its journalism education programs, including the coalition’s annual three-day journalism training program, called the New England First Amendment Institute, taught by some of the country’s top investigative journalists, media attorneys, and others.

It will be renamed the Gloria Negri First Amendment Institute, Silverman said.

Said Robinson: “I like to think that somewhere, Gloria is applauding the decisions we made.’’

Globe Santa is deeply appreciative of all donations, large and small, including any bequests made through your will. If you are considering such a gift, please contact Globe Santa executive director Bill Connolly, at bill.connolly@globe.com.

Linda Matchan can be reached at linda.matchan@globe.com