If Norman Knight could be persuaded that lending his name to one of the high-profile charitable endeavors he supported would inspire others to contribute generously, he was willing to do so — though sparingly.
There’s the Norman Knight Hyperbaric Medicine Center at Mass. Eye and Ear, for example, and the Norman Knight Nursing Center for Clinical and Professional Development at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Far more numerous, however, were the countless, largely unheralded ways he helped people in need. The 100 Club of Massachusetts, which he cofounded 65 years ago, assists families of firefighters and law enforcement officers who die in the line of duty. Along with leading the organization for years, Mr. Knight supplemented its efforts with additional checks he discreetly wrote. And with no media attention, he met with all families who suddenly, wrenchingly, lost loved ones.
Almost no one knew the full extent of how much he did and the deeply personal role he took.
“He had a tremendous impact. And I would tell you, he liked anonymity,” said Joe Finn, a former Boston fire commissioner. “You can’t measure what he’s done for families. He was just remarkable in how he dealt with them in their most difficult times — just a wonderful, wonderful man.”
Mr. Knight, who made his fortune by creating the Knight Quality chain of radio stations and had been a philanthropist since his early years in the field, was 99 when he died March 9 in his Boston home.
“I do have a basic philosophy that the only thing you have left when you die is what you gave away,” he once said.
That quote from him is one of few to be found. In keeping with his preference for anonymity, Mr. Knight rarely granted interviews.
And even when he spoke privately with those whose work his philanthropy supported, it often took multiple meetings before Mr. Knight opened up about himself. He was more comfortable asking people about their lives.
“He was so engaged and so interested, but it wasn’t about him ever,” said Debra Burke, senior vice president for patient care and chief nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital. “He always wanted to talk about what was happening here: ‘What’s going on with the profession? How can I help the nurses?’ "
Through major donations to create the center and fund awards for health care workers, “he was continuously thinking about how to celebrate nurses,” she said.
Ed Davis, a former Boston police commissioner, first met Mr. Knight in the late 1970s when Davis’s father, a Lowell police officer, died of a heart attack while on duty.
Years later, when Davis became police commissioner, they began meeting again in the same office where Mr. Knight had once comforted the grief-stricken Davis family.
Davis said he and Mr. Knight met “every time there was a tragedy, every time an officer died in the line of duty or there was a duty-related suicide.”
Mr. Knight, he added, “was the one we turned to when we had a terrible thing happen. His generosity and recognition of police officers and what they go through is unparalleled in the Commonwealth.”
Decades of supporting first responders also led Mr. Knight to fund the state’s first hyperbaric chamber. He took that step when two Boston firefighters had to be flown to Connecticut to be treated for carbon monoxide poisoning after the 1994 Charlestown fire that killed Lieutenant Stephen Minehan, who was working to rescue the injured men.
The initial hyperbaric chamber Mr. Knight funded at Mass. Eye and Ear was one of several donations he made for diagnostic equipment at the hospital, which in 2009 honored his commitment, even though he initially resisted receiving recognition.
“When asked to reflect on his own generosity, Mr. Knight characteristically turned the attention back to the hospital,” Mass. Eye and Ear noted in a publication. “He asked, ‘What would you do if Mass. Eye and Ear wasn’t here?’ "
In private conversations, Mr. Knight described his philanthropy by saying “this is a way you can find meaning in financial success and have it mean more than just numeric acquisition,” recalled Dr. Daniel G. Deschler, a former director of the Norman Knight Hyperbaric Medicine Center.
The higher profile philanthropy tended to publicly overshadow Mr. Knight’s scores of other donations, including those he made to Boston Health Care for the Homeless and his funding of dermatology clinics for the homeless, run by Dr. Ernesto Gonzalez-Martinez, a former chief of dermatology ambulatory services at MGH.
Mr. Knight, whose total contributions in those realms alone totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years, “really was devoted to making sure that homeless people had that service,” said Dr. Jim O’Connell, president of Boston Health Care for the Homeless.
“He cared about people who don’t have a voice,” said Binta Ceesay Jallow, Mr. Knight’s longtime partner. “He became the voice of people who people looked down on.”
O’Connell said he “grew to cherish my relationship with him because he was such a wise man, incredibly kind.”
When O’Connell would go out to dinner with US District Court Judge Mark Wolf, another friend of Mr. Knight’s, the two would call him and often stop by Mr. Knight’s home afterward. Those visits, Wolf said, “deepened our bond.”
They were among many prominent Bostonians who sought out Mr. Knight as a mentor for his advice and, occasionally, for his firm guidance.
“He was sort of that metaphorical older brother to me,” said former Legal Sea Foods chief executive Roger Berkowitz. “He had such knowledge wisdom and experience that he was qualified to whack me across the head a few times.”
Born in St. Louis on July 24, 1924, Norman Knight grew up in a household of limited financial means, and was a boy when his mother died.
“He started working when he was 10 years old,” said Mr. Knight’s longtime friend John Lynch.
A top student in high school, Mr. Knight was awarded a scholarship to Washington University in St. Louis, but soon decided to leave and start working, rising quickly through the ranks of radio stations in his hometown and in Arkansas, Tennessee, and West Virginia.
Mr. Knight, who had been an executive with the Mutual Broadcasting and RKO corporations, began purchasing and creating his own chain of radio stations in New England.
Two years after receiving the Golden Mike Award from the Broadcasters Foundation of America in 1996, he sold the Knight Quality chain, which included New Hampshire stations such as WGIR-FM in Manchester, and WHEB-FM and the former WTMN-FM in Portsmouth. In 2008, he was inducted into the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame.
Mr. Knight, whose marriage ended in divorce, had previously lived in Boston suburbs.
In addition to Jallow, Mr. Knight leaves three sons, Scott of Wellesley, Randall of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, and Robert of Boston; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren, according to Lynch.
A memorial service for Mr. Knight will be announced.
Along with a lengthy list of boards on which he served and institutions to which he contributed, Mr. Knight had chaired the fund-raising efforts to create the Massachusetts Fallen Firefighters Memorial statue by the State House.
“Your memory will live on in this memorial and the thousands of lives you have touched,” the organization said in a Facebook post.
For Mr. Knight, “philanthropy was core to his existence,” Deschler said. “From the day he got his first paycheck in radio working in maintenance, he started giving money away.”
“He was passionate about helping people out,” Jallow said.
“Some people, they give and they want the world to know, but he was the opposite. He took joy out of it. That was his happiest time.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.