Fund drive aiming to raise more than $1m this season

A 1956 photo shows Globe Santa making a happy landing thanks to the seamanship of Boston police harbor patrolmen William Kenneally and Anthony Scavongelli. (PAUL MAGUIRE/GLOBE FILE PHOTO)

The 2007 Boston Globe Santa Fund drive is in full swing, with hopes that by the last days of December more than $1 million will again be contributed so more than 50,000 children of families in need will have a happy Christmas.

This is the 51st year the newspaper has sponsored its Globe Santa program - an effort that has brought joy to nearly 2.5 million youngsters over the years.

It was the Boston Post, a daily morning newspaper that was a neighbor of the Boston Globe on Washington Street on what was known as Newspaper Row, that set the program in motion back in 1910.

That year Gertrude Buell Dunn, a Post reporter, discovered during an assignment that several families were living in the same neighborhood and were in desperate financial need. It was a time before unemployment insurance and Social Security. The families could barely afford food and clothing, and toys were going to be missing from the homes on Christmas morning.

The Post's city editor at the time, Edward J. Dunn (no relation to Gertrude Dunn), assigned his reporter to write a series of stories about the families. The stories were published with a solicitation for donations that were used to help give the families a proper Christmas. With that, the Post Santa Claus Fund was born.

Soon after its establishment, the Post Santa Fund expanded to cover more families when a textile strike in Fall River lasted through the Christmas season. Contributors to the fund helped Post Santa on his mission to bring Christmas joy to the children of the out-of-work textile employees, and established a practice of visiting not just the children of Boston, but of Greater Boston.

Post Santa continued until World War II, when the fund was put on hold. Supplies necessary to Post Santa's operation, including wrapping paper, could not be collected as the war effort continued. Soon after the war, the fund was restarted with the help of Mayor John Hynes.

In 1956, the financially strapped Post closed it doors, but the Boston Globe stepped in to continue the tradition under the now familiar name of Globe Santa.

The campaign that year opened with ceremonies held at the Fire Department facility on Northern Avenue that housed the city's fireboats and crews. Santa arrived at that location aboard a Boston police boat. He then climbed aboard a Fire Department pumping engine and was carried to the City Hall area on School Street, where he was greeted by a cheering crowd of children and adults.

The first Boston Globe Santa Claus Fund drive raised $51,103.81, which helped deliver toys to 27,900 children Christmas morning.

Since then, every year hundreds of letters seeking help have come in and so have hundreds of letters bearing contributions to the Santa fund. Despite the hardship and despair evident in many of the letters, the stories they reveal also provide rays of hope.

Leslie Ahern was one of Globe Santa's children in 1957. Ahern was 8 years old and her father had died a few years before Globe Santa paid her a visit. As she crawled into bed on Christmas Eve of 1957 she heard a knock at the back door of her family's home. When she peeked from behind her mother to see who was there, the man at the door filled her arms with presents and said, "From Globe Santa."

She wrote to the Globe 30 years later to explain how that Christmas made a lasting impression.

"We were no longer alone and scared. There were people out there, people who had never even met us, but who cared about us. That was the very gift we needed most that Christmas," she wrote. "At 8, I learned that people do care and can make a wonderful difference in the lives of other people. I know that this helped lead me to a life of work in social services."

There are also countless other children who do not need Globe Santa's assistance, but instead contribute to his cause.

Since the fund's start, the students of the Boston public schools have been among the most generous donors Globe Santa has seen. For the first years of the fund, the students, teachers, and administrators donated the largest total gift. In 1962, the schools made Globe Santa history by donating $8,581 - the largest single donation to the fund at that time. The public schools have remained annual contributors to the fund, and donated $23,619.85 last year.

The $100,000 donation mark was broken in 1961. In 1977, contributors donated more than $500,000 for the first time in Globe Santa history and then broke the $1 million mark 10 years later. Santa Fund contributors made 2000 the most charitable year ever for Globe Santa when more than $1.46 million was donated.

Last year $1,100,356.40 was raised and gifts were provided for 54,077 children in 29,058 families.

The Globe program is set up so the money raised this year is used early in the spring to buy the gifts that will be distributed next Christmas. Because The Boston Globe Foundation provides the funding for administrative expenses, all of the money raised in the annual drive is used to purchase gifts.

John C. Burke of the Globe Santa staff contributed to this report.