Celebrating Christmas With Some Big Winners : New Millionaires Find a Measure of Happiness in Lottery
They’re celebrating Christmas with a Mexican twist at the Irineo Carranza household today, just like they do every year. The family is together--Carranza, 53, his wife Consuelo and their four sons and four daughters, seven grandchildren and relatives from Mexico and elsewhere. To hold off hunger until the turkey is ready, there might be some pozole (a Mexican stew) left over from last night’s supper after midnight Mass.
Christmas as usual--only this year, Carranza is a rich man. He won $10.085 million in the California Lottery last August, making him one of the top two instant prize winners.
Swanky Neighborhood
So in addition to turkey and tamales, the Carranza Christmas will include a new four-bedroom house in the swankest neighborhood in Riverside. Carranza, who worked as field boss on a citrus ranch (he retired after winning the lottery), has a new Mercedes Benz. “There’s hardly a limit to what he spent for Christmas,” said Carranza’s friend, Joe Aguilar, translating for the lottery winner who speaks only Spanish.
Money and Christmas are intimate companions in this country; some people think they have become too close, and that their relationship has deteriorated into an immoral one. Many of the lottery winners interviewed for this story have known Christmas both ways--lean and fat. Eve Spencer, who won the largest instant game prize in history ($15.22 million) remembered owning only one roller skate as a child; her cousin had the other half of the set, which they swapped back and forth to make a complete pair. This year Spencer, 66, bought her husband a new Jaguar for Christmas.
Have the winners found that money does indeed buy Christmas happiness?
These new millionaires report they have supplemented rewarding family traditions with the unfamiliar experience of being able to give to their hearts’ content. As Eve Spencer answered, “If that’s happiness, yes.”
Laura Graney of Pasadena was on an outing with her 5-year-old’s school class when one of the children whispered to a companion and pointed at Graney: “That’s the lady that won $5,000!”
The sum is actually $5.21 million. Like the awed toddler, Graney’s own four children, ages 3 to 11, are only vaguely aware of the degree of the family’s new wealth. And that’s the way Graney and her husband, Bruce, like it. They don’t make a big deal out of winning the lottery, and in keeping with that attitude, Graney said this Christmas Day will be “Nothing different at all, the same old thing.”
On Christmas Eve the plan was to go to Graney’s mother’s house; today they’re due at Bruce Graney’s parents’ house. Bruce’s mother will cook the turkey.
Laura Graney said she’s giving her husband a limited edition of the novel “Hotel New Hampshire,” signed by author John Irving. Like other parents with less money to lavish, the Graneys struggled not to go overboard with gifts for the kids. “We think our kids have too many toys already,” Laura Graney said.
The couple owns an antique shop where Bruce Graney still works. Laura resigned as bookkeeper to devote time to writing screenplays. Graney said that at their ages (she is 35, Bruce is 39,) “I can’t imagine quitting work.”
“We were not suffering and we were not rich before,” she said. “Really what the money has done is add a security blanket for the kids and college.”
Anthony Columbus spent last Christmas in a liquor store. At the time, he was working as a clerk in South Gate, but, confident that a major change was coming, he quit the job three weeks before he won $3.26 million in the lottery last February.
Christmas Day in the past was “the day you made money,” he said. Normally, Columbus, 47, would go to work in the store about 1 p.m. on Christmas Day and close up around midnight. In between sales of rum and egg nog, someone would bring Columbus a plate of turkey and dressing. He said he always made it a point to call his mother in Pennsylvania to wish her a happy Christmas.
Today, Columbus will make the rounds of friends’ houses and enjoy a real sit-down Christmas dinner. There’ll be another Christmas in February when he moves into his new two-story, three-bedroom “big, big house” in Laguna Nigel, with views of Catalina on clear days. At that time, he said, he’ll fly his mother out to enjoy the new home.
Columbus, who says his occupation is “zero, retired,” also bought a Corvette for Christmas. “I’m the happiest guy you’d want to meet,” he said. “I can do what I want to do, just be happy, just be me. No more headaches, no more stress. That’s all thanks to the California Lottery.”
Elsie Hopkins marked her 86th birthday on Christmas Eve. This lottery winner (she won $4.235 million last September) takes birthdays and holidays pretty much in stride. She just wakes up each day and decides what she feels like doing. For instance, her son in San Jose wanted her to come visit for Christmas, but when she spoke to a reporter before the holidays, she still hadn’t made up her mind if she’d go. “I just live day to day,” she said.
Hopkins, of San Diego, remembers Christmases of her childhood as modest but loving affairs. The spirit of the day was kept vital not by gifts purchased, but by traditions such as canning fruits and vegetables and inviting people “who had less” home to share the Christmas meal.
“Money didn’t always mean a whole lot to me,” said Hopkins, who was living on a Social Security pension before winning the lottery. (Her husband died 1 1/2 years ago.) “You have to have it, but I’ve never had a whole lot and I’ve always been happy. My friends and my loved ones and my health all come before money.”
The oldest instant ticket winner, Hopkins recently moved into a comfortable two-bedroom apartment. She didn’t buy a big house or a fast car. She did buy a motorhome, which sleeps five. She’s making plans to go to Montreal and Quebec, maybe even Alaska later this year--if the mood strikes her at the time, of course.
Eve Spencer was bedridden following surgery for breast cancer up until two weeks before she won $15.22 million in the lottery last June. Although the cancer has not spread, it has been “an up and down battle” ever since, she said, as she struggles against ill effects from the interaction of various medications.
“I think the best Christmas present for me is just to be well. I already have everything else,” the Saratoga, Calif., resident said. Spencer and her husband, Paul Donner Spencer, plan to spend Christmas with their son and daughter-in-law in Grass Valley, as well as visiting other family and friends in the area.
“We’re trying very hard to be Santa Claus this year,” she said.
As well as bestowing extravagant gifts--a car for her son, gift certificates to expensive hotels for their friends--Eve Spencer will indulge in her favorite holiday ritual, painting the nails of all the “little girls and the big girls” at the Christmas gathering. It’s a tradition that seems to quiet down a potentially noisy bunch, said Spencer, 66. They also make up songs together on Christmas Day.
An artist who specializes in copper enamel work, Spencer predicted that this will be her best Christmas. Having a great deal of money simply relieves the worry of someday not having enough in a crisis, she said. “It’s a fantastic feeling.”
Because lottery winners are instant celebrities, Jim Smith is having to squeeze the holidays in between media dates--”Two on the Town,” a guest spot on “Card Sharks.”
A parts inspector for a computer company, Smith, 52, munched on a candy bar during a telephone conversation in which he described his new outlook on the holidays since winning $2 million in November of 1985.
“Before, we used to wonder if we could even afford the Christmas tree,” he said. “But everybody gets something this year. Christmas will be twice as good.”
Smith said he was making about $15,000 a year before luck looked his way. He and his wife, Tinysue, have eight children between them; they entertained 26 people at Thanksgiving and expect just as large a crowd today.
“Christmas will be ham and potato salad and presents,” Smith said. He’s getting the kids shirts and Levis, and each of them will get a special present, which he did not wish to reveal. As for Tinysue. . . .
“She’s already got it,” he said. “An ’87 Lincoln Town Car, and she’s got this house, which isn’t too shabby.” It’s a four-bedroom, three-bath home in Northridge, with a tennis court, swimming pool and jacuzzi.
“We never did argue much in the past,” Smith said, talking about himself and his wife. “But if we did argue it was over money. We haven’t had an argument since I won the lottery. There’s nothing to argue about. If you want it, you go get it. “
Ivanell Kitchen says she feels like she’s lived through a lot of different lives. Kitchen, who won $4.365 million on Feb. 15, lives in Chester, a town of about 2,000 south of Lassen National Park. Her late husband was blind, so the family lived mostly on Blind Aid and welfare. Kitchen’s children are grown now--she has two sons, 25 and 28, and a 31-year-old daughter--but when they were younger she got them pajamas or something else they really needed at Christmas.
Kitchen, 49, has since remarried. since winning lottery? Her husband Tom got a Lincoln Mark 4 for his birthday. For Christmas there’ll be a tie tack, cuff links, a dressy leather jacket and “a real expensive wallet, not alligator, but that really soft eel skin,” Kitchen said.
The children (her husband also has a son, 16, and daughter, 18) will receive more in the way of presents than they did during hard times in the past, “But I don’t think I’ve really spoiled them, even this year,” she said.
When her next lottery check arrives in January, Kitchen and her husband will go to Hawaii and then the Caribbean--the future looks to be an ongoing Christmas present.
There’ll be about 15 people coming for Christmas dinner. Every year Kitchen cooks the turkey and every year she gets a little more tired of the task. But this Christmas Day she’ll be the turkey-cooker again because, she says, there is no one else to do it.
Eric Daily was working as a produce clerk at Vons last December. When the clerks went out on strike, Daily, 25, had to scale down his expectations for Christmas and buy people more modest presents than he would have liked.
It’s all different this season, since Daily won $6.315 million in last February’s lottery. He quit his job, bought an auto leasing business and got married. “It feels a lot better now because I can buy really, really good presents,” said Daily, who lives in Westlake Village.
Continuing a tradition of 13 years, Daily will spend the day at the house of his 82-year-old grandmother in Camarillo. There’ll be a buffet dinner, lots of grandchildren around, and a pile of presents.
For Daily’s wife: a mink coat and a gold watch. Daily said it was more difficult to figure out what to get his grandmother. “When they get to be 82, they pretty much have everything,” he said.
“I always loved Christmas,” he said. “It’s a feeling. If you put a price tag on it then it’s not worth anything.”
Winning the lottery doesn’t guarantee happiness, he added, “But it gives you a pretty good jump start.”