Wednesday, September 25, 2013

NASCAR Fan - “Wild” Willie Seeley

NASCAR Fan “Wild” Willie Seeley
(Tony Dokoupil / NBC News)
NASCAR Fan “Wild” Willie Seeley of Manahawkin, New Jersey, has one piece of advice for the winner of last week’s $400 million Powerball pot in South Carolina: Run. “Just disappear,” he said, speaking from hard-won experience. “Get lost while you still can.”

Seeley, one of the Powerball lottery winners known as the "Ocean's 16," regrets how his life has changed since he hit the jackpot.

There are a lot of zeros in this money," said Paula Harper Bethea, executive director of the South Carolina Education Lottery, at a press conference announcing her state’s winner last week. “It’s a life-changing event.

Seeley, one of the Powerball lottery winners
known as the "Ocean's 16," regrets how
his life has changed since he hit the jackpot.
(Eduardo Munoz / Reuters file)
But as Willie’s story makes clear, a life-changing ticket is also a complicated windfall. Willie’s share of the $450 million pot was divided by two other winning tickets, and further divided by 15 coworkers, all of whom bought a ticket through a pool at the county garage where Willie worked as a warehouse manager. After taxes he had less than $4 million to call his own, which, as he put it, “ain’t sh-t in today’s economy.”

Still, it was enough money for Willie and Donna to leave their jobs, Willie saying sayonara to the county, Donna resigning a dangerous nursing post at a psychiatric hospital.

However, Wild Willie lamented, “They put me in the National Enquirer, next to Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. I mean I ain’t into all that.”

Not even for money? “Not for anything,” Willie said. “Would you want a camera following you around all day when you finally have the time to go hunting and fishing and do all the things you wanted to do?”

Before all this happened, he and Donna had bills but at least they could be themselves, watching Duck Dynasty, a finger looped over a bottle of Moosehead Lager, friends on the way over. He says he bought a shotgun “for protection” and still can’t act like a rich guy anyway. 

“I get cheap attacks,” he said. “You never heard of a cheap attack? It’s when you look at something you need, and think: Hell, I can’t afford that.”

“I do good deeds every day,” Powerball winner “Wild” Willie Seeley reported, “just like Dale Earnhardt. And just like him I don’t like bragging about it.”


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