NEWS

Cosentino wins the first state Lottery

Mike Richard Special for The Gardner News

The continuation of a yearlong series

“It was purely the luck of the draw,” that was how Don Cosentino recalled his lucky selection 47 years ago this week that catapulted him into the local limelight and put a cash windfall into his pocket.

Fellow worker Rene Richard held out three tickets for The Game – the first lottery drawing in state history – and told his George B. Bent Co. co-worker to “pick one.”

The following day – April 6, 1972 – the first-ever drawing of the Massachusetts State Lottery made Cosentino the area’s first-ever winner of the $50,000 top prize.

Cosentino recalled the events as vividly as if it happened yesterday, noting that Richard purchased the tickets at the former R&R Service Center located on the corner of Main and Willow streets, today a BP gas station.

The following day, he was working in the mill room getting ready to set up a borer machine when Richard came into the shop to announce the winning numbers.

“When the number was pulled, they used to put it on the window of the garage,” Cosentino remembered. “Rene walked up during lunch to get the numbers.”

As Richard read out the winning ticket numbers, Cosentino playfully called out that those were his numbers.

“I hadn’t even looked at my ticket. Rene said, ‘Let me see your ticket,’” Cosentino recalled. “I took my ticket out, and I didn’t even look at it. Rene looked at my ticket and he said, ‘You do have them!’ I thought he was kidding me, but when I finally looked at the ticket I said, ‘Oh my God, I do have it!’”

Cosentino still remembers the life-altering numbers and can recite them as easily as his own telephone number or Social Security digits – 302424.

Once the reality set in, Cosentino recalled the next few hours he walked around in a bit of a fog.

“I called City Hall and got (city clerk) Genia Pacocha, and she told me to come down to verify it, and sure enough, they were the numbers,” Cosentino recalled.

“She called into Braintree and verified the number and I was shaking. I could barely sign the release,” he recalled. “Honest to God, it was like I was drunk. I started getting a headache.”

Once the winning ticket was affirmed, Cosentino remembered he called his wife, Aline.

“I asked her, ‘Are you sitting down?’ and she thought I got hurt at work or something,” he said. “I said, ‘I just won $50,000,’ and she said, ‘What?’”

“I didn’t believe him, I thought he was joking,” his wife, Aline Cosentino, laughed.

Cosentino recalled that the very first thing he did, after coming home to see Aline, was to take a trip up the street from his 131 Lovewell St. home to visit Holy Spirit Church.

“I went into the church and thanked the Lord,” he said. “It couldn’t have come at a better time with five kids and all.”

With the big buildup associated with The Game, Cosentino jokingly told his kids that he would buy them all new bikes if he won the money.

At the time his young family included sons Duane, 13, Gary, 11, Donald, 5, and daughters Lisa, 9, and Aime, 10 months. Both Lisa and Duane had recently had their bicycles stolen after the family returned from a trip, so the bikes were the first big purchase.

That same night, Don had tickets to a Bruins Stanley Cup playoff game against Toronto at the Boston Garden, which he attended. However, before leaving, he told Aline to treat the children to dinner out.

“He told me to take the kids out to Kelly’s for hamburgers – we never did that – boy, was that a treat,” said Aline.

Cosentino and his family made all the major newspapers such as the Boston Globe, Boston Herald and Worcester Telegram with front-page photo splashes of the lucky family.

“People kept asking me, ‘Are you going to retire?’ But I wasn’t about to retire,” he said. “It did give us a lot of security, though, and it paid a lot of bills.”

After the government’s take, the final payoff for the Cosentino family was in the neighborhood of $37,000.

“I did go and buy a brand-new Volkswagen Beetle, $2,350 – brand new. Can you imagine that?” he marveled. “The guy asked me how I was going to pay for it, and I said, ‘I’m going to pay in cash!’”

At the time, Cosentino was working two jobs, so it allowed him to cut back to simply the job at Bent’s.

While the family did not adopt a lavish lifestyle, the money did allow for more quality family-spent time.

He bought a 24-foot travel trailer, took the kids to Disneyland, and also took other trips to locales such as Prince Edward Island and other parts of New England.

“Our lives didn’t change, but it just gave us a chance to do more things with the family,” he said, noting he was also able to do some remodeling around his house.

However, the newfound jackpot also had him receiving calls from longtime acquaintances, as well as complete strangers.

“The people who called me and asked me for money, you wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “We did get a lot of calls, and it was hard for me to say no to so many people.”

After George B. Bent’s closed, Don moved on to Ethan Allen in Ashburnham for several years before retiring from Nichols & Stone in 1998.

Cosentino noted that he still occasionally plays the lottery, and each year around April 6 he usually tries to parlay a bet with the same numbers 302424.

“I haven’t been lucky since then, but I’ve won a little here and there,” he said, adding, “but I’m luckier than a lot of other people who have never won anything.”

Over the life of the Big Game, Gardner had an inordinate number of notable winners until the final drawing of the 50-cent Big Money game ticket came back on Jan. 28, 1987. It was eventually replaced by bigger payoff games such as Megabucks, Mega Millions and Powerball.

Aside from Cosentino, other $50,000 winners included former Mayor Cyrille P. Landry in 1973, Robert Budwick in 1980, Raymond Doherty in 1981, Imelda LeBlanc in 1982, and Eino Parvianen in 1983.

There were also several million and Big Money winners from Gardner including Blanche Fredette in 1979, Amelia Poirier in 1980, and Marie Constantine in 1986. Two city residents also won $100,000 in the Big Money game – Anthony Marcinkiewicz in 1973 and Lawrence Roy in 1981.

In 1974, Raymond Cormier won $1 million in the Instant game, while Albert Delmonico won $1.5 million in a 1985 Megabucks payoff. Also, William Stone won Megabucks in 1989, while William and Mary Marois won $2 million in the lottery in 1997.

Several former Gardnerites also won big money in other states, including former Gardner High basketball standout John Driscoll, who won $4 million in the Connecticut lottery.

However, the granddaddy of all winners was Gardner native Frank Capaci, who was living in Streamwood, Ill., when he became the country’s biggest winner in 1998.

The 1949 graduate of Gardner High School collected one of the biggest paydays in the history of any lottery, winning $195 million in the Powerball.

Next week: Prohibition ends, Gardner becomes first community to sell beer (April 1933).

Comments and suggestions can be sent to Mike Richard at mikerichard0725@gmail.com or in writing to Mike Richard, 92 Boardley Road, Sandwich, MA 02563.