The Bay Area Community Foundation in Bay City, Michigan, has received $1.7 million and twenty acres worth $300,000 from the estate of Robert J. Carrier, a former copy editor at the Bay City Times and a nature lover, the Times reports.

The gift is the largest individual gift in the organization's twenty-three-year history. The land, located across the street from the Bay City State Recreation Area and near Tobico Marsh, will be turned into a nature preserve, and the $1.7 million will be used primarily to maintain the land, as well as to help fund operations at the community foundation.

Carrier grew up in Bay City, attended the University of Michigan, and returned to his hometown after working for more than twenty years on the copy desk at the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal. He retired from the Times in 1995. According to his attorney, Mark Brissette, Carrier invested in the stock market and held onto his investments; he never married or had children. Brissette said he also bequeathed $10,000 to St. Maria Goretti Catholic Church to feed and clothe needy people in Bangor Township.

"He was fairly private as a person," Brissette said of Carrier. "However, he had a lot of affection for organizations that he thought did great things."