What happens to sweepstakes winners

Title

Language

English

Source

Panorama Volume XVII (Issue No.8) August 1965

Year

1965

Subject

Sweepstakes

Lotteries

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

Fortune does not always follow the lucky winner in big games.

Fulltext

■ Fortune does not always follow the lucky winner in big games. WHAT HAPPENS TO SWEEPSTAKES WINNERS? “Money doesn’t bring hap piness” is not a saying in vented by the rich to keep the poor contented. The cold, grim truth is that peo ple who hopefully buy a sweeptakes or lottery ticket are usually lucky only if they don't win the grand prize. When they do win . . . Roland Steele was only 24 when he won $40,000 in the Irish Sweepstakes, but his fellow-workers in a New York loan company, and re porters who interviewed him, were amazed at his calmness. "I’m going to stick to my job,” he told questioners. “This money isn’t going to change me.” He remained a steady, in dustrious clerk for a few months, but gradually the $40,000 was burning a hole in his pocket. Quite suddenly, he an nounced that he was going back to Alabama, his home State, to settle down. But first, he would have ‘‘one fling.” A month later, Steele lay dead in a New Orleans bar room, stabbed by a hostess. The girl told police she at tacked Steele to save the life of her bartender sweetheart during a drunken brawl. It doesn’t always take drink and debauchery to turn the head of a man showered with sudden riches. Maurice Gold was a nondrinker. When he received $150,000 in a sweep stakes, he was a middle-aged baker in New York. He quits his job and bought a large fruit store. Since he knew nothing of that business, he failed within six months and his creditors collected a large share of his $150,000. “I’ve been a fool,” Gold told his wife. “Why didn’t I stick to the trade I know?” So he invested the rest of his money in a bakery. But, al August 1965 53 though he was a good baker, he had no experience in the business end. Soon he be came bankrupt. Broke, he suffered a nervous breakdown from which he never recover ed. Reality appears to depart from the minds of some "lucky winners” with the ar rival of the check for five figures. Joshua Holder was a 90-cents-a-day dock worker in Trinidad, B.W.I. For a half-day’s pay, Holder bought a sweepstakes ticket which returned him $21,000. He bought a car and hired a chauffeur. He then open ed the front door of his house to his friends and declared that it would never be closed again. Every night, a calpyso or chestra played for their en tertainment, and liquor flow ed freely. Every day Holder ordered his chauffeur to drive him to the bank, where he drew a check. Nine months later the bank mana ger informed Holder that his balance was $25. According to the Trinidad Guardian, the unfortunate man went home and took his own life. He had not believed it pos sible that so much money could come to an end. And he could not face the pros pect, after living like a mil lionaire, of going back to his 90-cents-a-day job. This inability to do simple arithmetic seems to be an ‘‘occupational disease” of sweepstakes winners. It made short work of George Her bert Cuffin of London, Eng. Cuffin, a 50-year-old widower who had married a widow, worked in a cement factory to support his wife and their combined family of 11 child ren. One day, says the De troit Times, he came home followed by cheering mob of friends and hangers-on — he had won $120,000. Sadly, Mrs. Cuffin tells the story of what happened then. "Next day he bought a farm and an eight-room house and a car. He filled the house with servants, but since nei ther he nor I were accustom ed to managing servants, they did no work and I had to work harder than ever. Every morning he would dress like a toff in new clothes and drive off like a business exe cutive, smoking a cigar. 54 PANORAMA “But the only business he did was to cash another check and stand drinks to all the loafers in the city. That, was bad enough, but he took to putting money into every proposition that his new ‘f r i e n d s’ suggested. He bought everything offered to him, at three times the real value. '‘When he was finally told there was no money, George would not believe it. He went down to the bank and accused them of holding out his money on him. When he saw the detailed accounts, he went out on a drinking bout that landed him in the hos pital. In a week he was dead of acute alcoholism. We had to sell the car for enough to bury him. That’s the luck that sweeptakes brought this family.” Windfalls do not have to run into astronomical figures to bring bad luck. James Goodall, a mechanic, won only $6250. But it was enough to enable him to car ry out his lifelong dream — to build a plane of his own design. On its trial flight the plane crashed and Goodall was killed. Similarly, Mrs. Lulu Mae Lane of Delaware, who had needed an operation for years but had put it off until she could afford the best doctors available, decided to use $1000 she won in a 10-cent pool for that purpose. She died on the operating table. Leonard May won $5000 in a sweeptakes and deter mined to take the first "real vacation” of his life. On the first day he went for a swim and was drowned. Hugh O’ Rourke probably never realized how lucky he was, and undoubtedly is still telling sadly of the time he “nearly” won the Irish sweep. It h ap p e n e d this way: O’Rourke bought a ticket under the name of “Butch,” and in due time the New York papers reported that a sweeptakes ticket signed ‘‘Butch” had won twenty thousand dollars. O’Rourke went out and bought seven bottles of Scotch, and invited all his friends to a party. During the evening he and his guests put in long-distance calls to relatives and friends all across the country. “Every August 1965 thing’s on me,” O’Rourke said genially. Next day he discovered that he was the wrong “Butch.” Someone else had used the same pseudonym. But all that O’Rourke was out was the price of seven bottles of Scotch and a cou ple of hundred dollars for phone calls. Women are no more im mune from “tragic good luck” than are men. Jennie Quinoes of Porto Rico was a 22-year-old girl who lived with her parents and eight brothers in a San Juan slum. Somehow, she acquired a ticket in the Madrid lottery, and somehow that ticket won $180,000. Jennie went in person to collect. The entire popula tion of the poor district in which she lived came down to the dock to see her off. She promised to return im mediately and to bring pre sents for everybody. But Jennie did not return immediately. Instead, she toured Europe with an en tourage that a princess might have envied. By the time she reached New York she was 56: being hailed as the ‘‘San Juan Cinderella.” When Jennie finally re turned home, the squalor and lack of chic of her family and neighbors appalled her. She moved into a smart apart ment and refused to have any thing to do with them. Her family was puzzled and hurt; the neighbors were envious and hated her. Jennie soon met someone who suited her. Anthony Montalvo had a "grand man ner.” He kissed her hand, bowed from the waist — and, moreover, he told her, he was very rich and of the Spanish nobility. Jennie married him and they moved to New York. Montalvo’s millions were “tied up in a big deal,” ne cessitating some borrowing from his wife. The millions remained tied up. for a long time, and the borrowings continued until there was very little of Jennie’s money left — so lit tle that they had to move from their swank penthouse apartment into one room in a cheap boarding house. One night some detectives came around and took Montalvo Panorama away. A shocked Jennie learned that he was neither a millionaire nor her hus band. In fact, he was a sales man with two wives living. Broke, and unable to face the family she had scorned, Jennie turned on the gas in her lonely room and died — just ten months after she had been “lucky” enough to win the Madrid lottery. Next best to avoiding the ill luck of wealth by failing to win sweepstakes, declares Hilde Marchant in Picture Post, is the method adopted by George Melville, a Lon don stone mason. A year or so ago Melville was making $25 a week and living with his wife, son, and daughter in a two-roomed flat. Today Melville is still earning $25 a. week and liv ing with his wife, son and daughter in the small tworoomed flat. The only new possession of the family is a bank book with a single en try: ‘‘Credit — $320,000.” Melville won that in a football pool, one of the largest pay-offs on record. Frightened by the size of the prize, he promptly put it in to the bank, hid the bank book, and is trying to forget all about it. “I wish I’d never won it," he says. “But I figure it won’t do us any harm, as long as we don’t touch it. And we aren’t going to.” — From Picture Post and Detroit T imes. MACHIAVELLI FOR VOTERS We must prescribe to all Filipino voters Machia velli’s book. “The Prince”, a compulsory reading in the universities of the West. If we knew this book by heart, we would not be fooled by our leaders, especially by those who parrot integrity and other protestations of goodness for facade. August 1965 57

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53

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