- Ian Allen/Staff Photographer
Patrick Green is a serious man when it comes to his numbers.
A REAL live millionaire who will admit that he or she is such in Jamaica is a rare find. According to Sonia Davidson of the Jamaica Lottery Company, winners usually disappear after collecting their winnings, changing their telephone numbers and even moving from their previous abode.
Well, Outlook managed to find a millionaire for you. A resident of Kingston we will call him Patrick Green (not his real name).
It was in 2002 that Mr. Green received his windfall of $10 million from the Jamaica Lottery Company.
He recalls, "I was right in my bedroom (when the numbers were called). It was in Easter last year."
The story begins, however, a few weeks before he actually hit the jackpot.
Green, a wharf worker who has one of six children left in school, was worrying about school fees for September, when, one week, he decided to stop buying the lottery in order to save the amount he would need.
"Things were bad for me down there (at the wharf)," he told Outlook. "Money was low. I figured out that I better start save for her school fee from in the Easter. I eased up on the gambling."
However, Green would still choose his numbers and one afternoon when he came home early, his daughter came into his room and said, "Daddy you not buying Lotto?"
Perhaps the question, posed by the very one he was worried about, was enough to release him from his mental commitment. He got up, and went out to buy the the numbers.
Drama
A few hours later, the two of them were jumping around in the room when they realised that his numbers have been called. "So I was looking, so the numbers came." His wife was sleeping. Green did not say anything to her, until the next morning, when father and daughter made a drama of the whole event.
In one year, Green and his family have moved from Waterford in St. Catherine to a new five-bedroom and three-bathroom, multilevel, house in a quiet residential area of Kingston. He has been refurbishing the house -- purchased with over half of the money -- to his specifications.
He has also used an area of his new property for a garden of bananas, plantains and okra.
Green is a man at peace. The house in Waterford is rented and Green says he is trying to live off the interest of the remainder of his $10 million win. He has withdrawn from work on the wharf, as he has met some amount of resentment among former work mates. "I am a simple man, a proud man, and I like to keep things simple," he told Outlook. "Being as work so hard down the wharf and so frustrating, I usually pray and ask God to make me win some money to relieve me from sun and dust of wharf. My prayer has been really answered."
Prudently, he has refrained from making gifts of cash to anyone. He comments, "I would like to win some more money to set up my children. I sit down and talk to them and say really I really have to set up myself before I do anything else."
Worked in Canada
His wife told Outlook that before her husband won the Lotto, she worked in Canada. She may go back some time she said, but not right now. She enjoys looking after her new and very spacious home. We caught her watching "The Price is Right," a game show which she says she loves. "Green is strict. He is very strict, but loving," she told Outlook.
The couple do not plan to travel. Nor do they intend to fill their house to over flowing with furnishings. "What's the point of filling up the place? I would have to go back to work?" Green said.
His only vehicle is still the small panel van which he used to work on the wharf. He figures that, with prudent spending, he may never have to return to the sun and the heat. He's a millionaire, but he will never be a big spender.
- Avia Ustanny
Living with a $million
WHAT WOULD you do with a sudden windfall of Jamaican one million dollars or the same amount in $US?
Courtney Bell, 33, contracts clerk: With one million Jamaican dollars I would put a good chunk of it into investments; I would start a business venture. The second priority would be education. I am actually doing a degree now so that is where I would spend the rest.
James Clarke, 39, manager: I would give it to the poor.
Marjorie Miller, 38, accountant: I would pay off my mortgage.
Dave Miller, 33, auto salesman: With US$1 million I would first buy a ticket to Japan and spend two weeks there buying stock for my business. I would put about one third of it in JMMB to sleep for a while too. But, the focus would be on expanding my business. After the Japan trip, I would take my family on vacation up to my favourite places on the north coast. After I finished gallivanting, I would focus on working. Almost certainly, in the first year, I would also build a nice house on the hills. I would build some apartments for resale as well.
- O.T.
Names changed by request.
