Millionaire Steps Up to Claim $314.9-Million Powerball Prize

Already a millionaire once, a West Virginia contractor’s good fortune multiplied after a ticket he played in the Christmas Day Powerball drawing won $314.9 million -- the largest undivided jackpot won in a U.S. lottery.

Dazed under a gargantuan black cowboy hat, Andrew “Jack” Whittaker, 55, a sewage treatment contractor, showed up with his family Thursday at West Virginia State Lottery headquarters to claim the first $10 million of a $111.7-million lump sum that will come next month. “I don’t have good luck, I’m blessed,” said Whittaker, shaking his head as he pocketed the check from state lottery officials. Whittaker opted for the single payment instead of 30 annual installments.

Only hours after he realized Thursday morning that all six numbers on his Powerball ticket matched the winning pick, Whittaker was already musing about how he would divvy up his winnings. First, he said he would tithe to his church. “I just want to thank God for letting the machine pick the right numbers for me,” Whittaker said.

Once three pastors take 10% of his winnings, Whittaker said he would put some of the cash into his three construction firms and hoped to hire back 25 workers laid off before Christmas. He talked of moving out of his 10-year-old brick home into a gated community. And indulging a businessman’s fantasy, Whittaker allowed that he might finally buy a helicopter he has been mooning over for years. “I’ve worked for everything I got,” Whittaker said, “but this is the first thing anybody’s ever given me.”

Whittaker lives in the tiny unincorporated town of Scott Depot, 20 miles south of Charleston. He bought the ticket Monday at a convenience store in neighboring Hurricane. He paid $100 for a block of tickets at the C&L; Superserve. It is a luxury he permits himself only when the lottery take surpasses $100 million.

“I figured it would take that much before I could do anything good with my winnings,” Whittaker said. He joked that he may lower his threshold to $10 million. Whittaker watched the multi-state drawing Wednesday night but thought he had another batch of losers, though coming close. “I thought I only got four of them because the numbers came up wrong on the TV screen,” he said.

But when Whittaker awoke just after 5 a.m. Thursday, he checked again after he heard on the radio that the winning ticket had been purchased at the C&L.; “Let me see that ticket,” he told his wife, Jewel.

“I looked at it, and sure enough, we had a winner.”

Jewel Whittaker, who has been married to her husband for 36 years and shares his devout faith in the Church of God, said she wanted to use a portion of her husband’s winnings to tour Israel “because it’s where Jesus walked.” Their daughter, Ginger McMahan, said she had been preparing to go back to work after several bouts with cancer, but said: “I think I’m going to retire now.”

“My biggest problem,” Whittaker said, “is keeping my daughter and my granddaughter from spending all my money in a week.”

Out on Tays Valley Road, a winding country lane in Scott Depot where farms have been steadily replaced over the last decade with the tract homes of middle-class commuters, neighbors gawked at the parade of TV news vans at the Whittakers’ driveway.

“We’ve never had a commotion like this in all the years I’ve been here,” said Doris McBrayer, who lives down the street. Like many of her neighbors, McBrayer said she knew the Whittakers “well enough to wave hello and such,” but added that “they pretty much keep to themselves.”

Coal mines dot Putnam County where the Whittakers live, but even a resurgent mining industry has been shaken by layoffs in recent months. Whittaker was forced to slash jobs at the three firms where he employs 117 workers.

“I want to get them back to work as soon as possible,” he said, adding that he hoped to do so by expanding his firms with some of his windfall.

Whittaker’s take was the biggest Powerball prize in history, topping a $295.7-million jackpot in July 1998. The game is played in 23 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Whittaker’s was also the largest single-winning ticket in any U.S. game of chance -- more than the historic $363-million Big Game jackpot of May 2000, which was split by two winners.

West Virginia officials were ecstatic at Whittaker’s stroke of luck. A state with the second-lowest per capita income in the nation, West Virginia will get $11 million for school and senior citizen programs from its 6.5% tax bite of Whittaker’s prize, West Virginia Lottery spokeswoman Nancy Bulla said.

Total sales in West Virginia for the Christmas Day Powerball lottery soared to $3.8 million -- far surpassing the state’s $500,000 average lottery take. But of all the state’s 1,400 lottery franchises, C&L; won the $100,000 stipend reserved for the store that sells the winning ticket. “We can’t believe it was a local customer,” store manager Amy Trogdon said.

Whittaker is a regular at the store, showing up about 6 a.m. every morning to buy “gas and a biscuit.” When he called his lawyer Thursday to confirm he had won, the attorney ordered him to lie low. But by 8 a.m., Jewel Whittaker had a hankering for a biscuit, so the couple drove into Hurricane and stopped at C&L.;

After pumping his gas, Whittaker strolled inside, keeping mum while reporters trawled the aisles, trying to learn the identify of the lucky winner.

“How you feeling today?” the cashier asked him. “I just won the lottery,” Whittaker whispered proudly.

“No you didn’t! You’re not excited enough to win the lottery,” the cashier said. Then she pushed him out the door.