Lottery winner helps education too

The New York Lottery may have contributed nearly $2.6 billion to help support education in the state last year, but education is going to get a little help from a Queens winner, too.
One of the five $1 million grand-prize winners in the New York Lottery Turkey Raffle, 89-year-old Lucille Kimble of Jamaica, said she feels blessed.
After collecting her symbolic million-dollar check from Lottery spokesperson Yolanda Vega, the retired Columbia University employee promised to use some of the money to support a scholarship fund.
What’s all the more impressive it that it’s a fund that Kimble started.
“Over 20 years ago I organized the Northeastern/Southeastern Scholarship Fund,” she said, adding “Some of these winnings will go towards continuing this wonderful scholarship.”
The $10 raffle tickets - each with a unique 9-digit random number - were sold between Monday, November 3 and Thanksgiving eve, November 26, when the computer system at Lottery headquarters in Schenectady picked 5,050 winners, from the five grand prizes, down to 4,370 $50 winners.
Everybody got something. Losing tickets were $1 dollar coupons for other lottery purchases.
Kimble and the other grand-prize winners got their oversized checks at a ceremony overlooking the Panorama of New York City display in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park’s Queens Museum building, on Thursday, December 18.
A couple from Staten Island, a Manhattan resident and a Jerseyite who bought his winner in Manhattan also won, as did a Long Islander.
Kimble purchased her winning ticket at Variety Drugs on 137th Avenue in Jamaica. Like the other winners, she netted out $645,020 after the required tax withholdings.
“I have been all over the world, Spain, France, Italy, but I have always wanted to visit the Caribbean,” Kimble said, adding, “Now I think I can finally make that happen.”
Maybe she’ll stop in that other Jamaica while she’s at it.