Wednesday, August 19, 1998

Rich and famous get new neighbors

By Bob Greene

REYNOLDSBURG, OHIO - The Lucky 13 - that would be the 13 factory workers, all men, who won the $295.7 million prize in the Powerball lottery this summer - have been doing their best to lie low and presumably to figure out how they will deal with being suddenly, staggeringly rich.

They work over in Westerville, not far from here - machinists and assembly workers at the Automation Tooling Systems plant. The 13, who pooled pocket money every week to enter the world's biggest-ever lottery, elected to take their winnings right now - rather than have it paid out over the years - which immediately reduced the jackpot to $161.5 million. Each man will receive approximately $8,944,447 - but will have to pay additional taxes.

Still, the 13 factory workers are each about to become among the wealthiest citizens in central Ohio. They can move into the most exclusive neighborhoods, drive the fanciest cars, take the most lavish vacations, wear the most elegant clothes - anything they want, they can have. What that will mean - not just for them, but for their neighbors (new and old) - is the secret behind the lure of gigantic lotteries. Even more than the money itself, the changes the money represents is what's most fascinating about Powerball and the other huge-dollar drawings.

In every city and town in the U.S., the big wealth has traditionally been held by the people who acquired it in time-honored ways - industrialists, leading merchants, bankers, real estate moguls, heirs. They had the money, ruled the top-dollar neighborhoods, called the shots. To people in other parts of every town, the elite with the mansions on the hill were living proof that life's not fair.

The lotteries have prospered on the promise of turning all of that upside down. When the one member of the Lucky 13 who went public right away - John Jarrell - drove up to his house astride his year-old Harley-Davidson motorcycle, he presented the perfect visual image of Powerball's symbolism. Jarrell, looking more like Hulk Hogan than a baron of industry, made it clear that he and his fellow winners would like to keep not only the money, but their privacy, too. And Hulk Hogan on a Harley or not, what Jarrell didn't need to say was that he could now afford to live the life that, prior to Powerball, only Ohio's richest families could dream of.

"Life's not fair?" You have to believe that because of Powerball, it's the traditionally wealthy families who are saying (or thinking) that now. The old-money families of central Ohio had better get ready to greet their new neighbors - the beneficiaries of the newest of new money: lottery money.

Who's to say what is really fair or unfair? Families that inherit the wealth earned by business visionaries generations earlier - do those families work any harder for their money than do machinists on hourly wages in a factory? Are they any more worthy?

It's all a flip of the coin - for families who inherited money they did nothing to earn, for 13 men who just became millionaires many times over by the fluke of holding the right numbers on a ticket (while the millions of holders of losing tickets can rightfully feel they have contributed to the sucker tax that lotteries represent).

The tricky thing here is that the Lucky 13 - before they even choose which luxurious neighborhoods to move into - have automatically and invisibly shifted into the neighborhood of received envy. Like the multimillionaires in central Ohio's most historically wealthy families, the Lucky 13 are already viewed with longing from afar. They have the aura now - they have the power to say "yes" or "no." (Robert Kronk, who dropped out of the Lucky 13's ticket-buying pool three months ago after being a part of the pool for seven years, told a reporter he's hoping his old friends will not shut him out: "I'm sure they'll take care of me. I've helped them out before.")

Meanwhile, the Lucky 13, like most wealthy and powerful people, are communicating through a lawyer/

spokesman. The lawyer, Larry Sturtz, said he advised the 13 to be wary of "brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, distant cousins who are going to come out of the woodwork and ask for a piece of the action."

Which is something the very rich have known for centuries. Things happen quickly these days, but the Lucky 13 are just more new proof that ours remains a nation of unlimited equal opportunity for all. The American way - a land where any citizen can become a millionaire overnight, and any child, no matter how humble his or her beginnings, can grow up to be special prosecutor.

Chicago Tribune