Record Powerball winner offers $2 million to fix Esat Millinocket high school's roof (Bangor: 2013)

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Record Powerball winner offers $2 million to fix Maine high school's roof - U.S. News

The 84-year-old Florida resident who scored the largest undivided American lottery jackpot ever wants to
donate $2 million to fix the roof of a Maine high school in her hometown.
Gloria MacKenzie, who took home a $590.5 million Powerball jackpot in June, has kept a since low profile she turned in her winning ticket. But the superintendent of schools in East Millinocket, Maine, says Mackenzie has offered to write a hefty check to repair the roof of the town’s high school, where her
daughter teaches biology, the . Bangor Daily News reported “They want their privacy respected, so I don’t think they will have any comment publicly,” SuperintendentQuenten Clark told the paper on Tuesday. He said that family members of MacKenzie, who took home a
lump sum of $370.9 million, had given him a “verbal assurance” that she would be willing to pay to patch up the high school’s leaky roof. The paper said it was not able to reach members of MacKenzie’s family to confirm the offer. MacKenzie is a former resident of East Millinocket, and still has ties to the town, according to the Bangor Daily News. In addition to her daughter’s job teaching local kids at the high school, her son is a former town selectman, according to . the paper
People in the town of about 1,700 said they knew they were lucky to have the MacKenzie clan around
even before the matriarch’s generous offer.
“It is kind of amazing,” Clark said of the offer. “They lived in the community for generations and they are willing with their good fortune to help the community.” “They take their heritage to heart when it comes to the town and helping the town out,” school board
Chairman Daniel Byron told the Bangor Daily News. What to do about the roof at the school dating to 1957 has vexed parents and officials in the town for the better part of a year, the paper reported. In total, a full renovation of the aging Schenck High may cost as much as $7 million. "I think without [the donation], the school was going to die," Clark told NBC News affiliate . "East WCSH
Millinocket was not going to have a school in the long run, and I think with this we'll be able to keep the
school going for a while."

The town of East Millinocket, once known as “the town that paper made,” suffered a downturn in recent
years after the local paper mill closed. Local workers got a boost in 2012, however, after the re-opened
plant got an order to print paper for the runaway erotic series ‘Fifty Shades of Grey.’
MacKenzie has shown considerable New England reserve since winning her massive jackpot. The retiree
Record Powerball winner offers $2 million to fix Maine high school's roof - U.S. News
Page 2 of 2 Jul 24, 2013 03:10:45PM MDT
wore sunglasses and declined to comment to reporters when she arrived at lottery offices in Florida in
June to claim her prize.
Her only public comment has been in a prepared statement read by lottery officials on her behalf, in which she recounted how another customer had let her cut in line at a supermarket outside Tampa to buy what turned out to be the life-changing ticket.

“While in line at Publix, another lottery player was kind enough to let me go ahead of them in line to
purchase the winning Quick Pick ticket,” MacKenzie said in the statement. “We are grateful with this
blessing of winning the Florida Lottery Powerball jackpot.”
“We hope that everyone would give us the opportunity to maintain our privacy for our family’s benefit,” she
said.