Sean C. Morgan
Four Sweet Home couples found out last week what it’s like to win the big one.
Ralph and Joyce Martin, Helen and Dick Martin, Gerald and Carol Leest and Chuck and Edi Smith split a $1.8 million jackpot in the Oregon Lottery’s Jan. 1 Megabucks drawing. They claimed their price at the Lottery office in Salem on Jan. 3.
They chose to receive payment in one lump sum, which cuts the jackpot in half, instead of taking payment over 25 years. This left $900,000 to split between them, netting $225,000 per couple before taxes.
The couples got together last week to celebrate on Wednesday and Thursday night.
“This is how it started, how we started buying tickets,” Carol said. The group of eight gathers weekly for a barbecue or dinner or just do things together. They started putting $10 per couple into the weekly Megabucks drawing on July 4.
They take two sets of quick pix for two drawings each week, Wednesday and Saturday, for $40.
They usually win a free ticket, Helen said, but when they don’t, they pick up new tickets on Tuesday for the full amount and try again.
The group has won four of six numbers four times, winning a prize of about $40. About two months ago, the group hit five of six numbers on tickets from Thriftway and won $790.
“We thought that was pretty good,” Helen said. “We sort of felt like we were on a roll. We had some little teasers before.”
They don’t plan to stop playing the lottery.
“You’ll see us in the paper again next week,” Gerald said.
Helen usually buys the tickets, but she was busy the week of the winning ticket. Dick went down to Safeway and bought the winning ticket.
Smiling big, Dick held up his index finger, nodding toward it and announcing, “I used this finger right here to push the buttons.”
“I checked it Monday morning, like I usually do,” Helen said. The first line had maybe one number match. The next one might have had two. “Then I hit one, I think it had three. When I got down to line H, I went this one’s got a lot of them (numbers).”
She looked to the right, just to see and let herself down gently. She looked again, and there it was, all six numbers.
“I was rather calm, actually,” Helen said. She called Dick. When she got a chance to tell him, “I said, Dick, don’t you dare take that ticket over to your mom and dad (Ralph and Joyce). I finished my routine, got in the shower and got dressed.”
Ralph and Joyce were still not answering the phone when Helen called to say they were coming over.
“I called Chuck, ‘Are you sitting down?'” Helen said. “‘No, but I can be.’ I said, ‘Chuck, we hit it.'”
They had to make sure Edi wasn’t driving when they called her.
The couple went over together and showed Ralph and Joyce the winning ticket.
Carol was the only one that didn’t find out right away.
When Carol arrived at Ralph and Joyce’s, Helen handed her the ticket and a sticky note with the numbers.
“Then we just whooped and hollered,” Helen said. “It’s just now digesting.
“It’s unreal,” Carol said. With all the excitement, she was having a hard time sleeping last week.
Only the Smiths said they had any big plans. They plan to use the money to build a new home on Highway 228.
“Probably, our kids will benefit, too,” Edi said.
Ralph had already purchased a new TV with DVD and VCR by Wednesday. Helen and Dick will finish work on their home.
“I’m going to stay here and do what I always do,” Dick said, laughing. “I’m going to buy a new TV, with color and everything!”
It’s enough money to make life easier, and it opens up new options and opportunities, Helen said. “Decisions are just changed. You can just rethink all of your big plans.”
“It’s not enough to set you up for life, but it makes it wonderful,” Carol said.
Carol wasn’t a big believer in the Lottery, everyone else said, but she went along for the social aspect.
“She was the negative one, and she even said we ought to get out of it,” Gerald said.
“Someone always wins,” Helen, one of the optimists, said. “It might as well be us.”
Ralph is a Hall of Fame banjo player. He and Joyce are retired. Ralph was a longshoreman.
He hosts a giant banjorama every July 4 at his home.
“This rejuvenated the banjo party,” Ralph said. The shop area where the banjo players gather will get a new door and some improvements.
Chuck operates Woodchuck’s Tree Service.
Helen and Dick operate a web-based store that will come on-line soon. It offers organic coffees and teas.
Carol is an aide at Hawthorne School. Gerald works with Chuck at Woodchuck’s.
Edi works for Trees, Inc.
Their friends have all been calling, they said, all of the calls are friendly and congratulatory.