Catch Of A Lifetime
Published: July 2, 2005
Among all the ways to tell your boss that you need an emergency leave, Christopher Ewen of Seymour picked a beaut Tuesday - perhaps the best in Connecticut history.
Ewen returned from a long weekend of fishing to discover that one of the five lottery tickets sitting in his car at home had won the $59.5 million Powerball jackpot in Saturday night’s drawing.
“My boss asked me if I was all right. He said that I looked a little white and maybe I should sit down,” said Ewen, 45, who works as a specialty parts salesman at RAF Electronic Hardware in Seymour. “I told him that I was going to be fine.”
Ewen and his wife, Lucille, spent most of Tuesday consulting financial advisers and telling their bosses that they needed some time off. Lucille Ewen explained to her boss at a Seymour bank “that I’ll be taking some leave time - but obviously I probably won’t be going back.”
The Ewens’ prize is the largest in the 33-year history of the state lottery in Connecticut and the fourth Powerball jackpot awarded in the state. Their winning number was drawn eight years to the day after a New Britain resident shared an $8 million jackpot.
At a news conference Wednesday afternoon at Connecticut State Lottery headquarters in New Britain, Christopher Ewen presented the unflappable demeanor of a veteran lottery player who is already taking his cues out of the Lottery Winner’s Handbook. He plans to take the lump sum payment - after taxes - of $24.3 million, place it in a safe, interest bearing account until he decides how to invest it, take a deep breath, and make no rash moves while he’s working with financial advisers.
Ewen bought his winning ticket Friday while making his regular morning stop for coffee and the papers at the Shop Smart convenience store on New Haven Road in Seymour. He and his wife, native Long Islanders who met at Dowling College and love beaches and the sea, then went off for the weekend - he won’t say where - with their three children. The Ewens had no idea of the mystery that had built over the weekend after Saturday’s announcement of the winning ticket and word that no one had stepped forward to claim the prize.
“When I go on vacation I don’t look at newspapers or anything,” Ewen said. “I like to fish, so you can’t find me anywhere. So I had no idea there was a mystery back in Connecticut over this ticket.”
On Tuesday morning, when he pulled into the Shop Smart and was checking the tickets that he’d left in his car, Ewen said there were tears in his eyes and his hands were shaking as he realized that he had won.
Amazon discount!
Polaroid PDV-1002A Portable DVD Player with Rotating 10.2-Inch LCD Screen“I was so excited that I had to run into the store and ask everyone in there to confirm these numbers,” Ewen said.
Ewen, an avid saltwater fisherman, usually fishes out of Stratford with friends, and said that until now he could not afford his own boat.
“The only thing I am going to change is my fishing habits,” he said. “I used to be a weekly fisherman, but now I will be a daily fisherman.”
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: