1984 SPECIAL REPORT: "MILLIONAIRE LOTTERY WINNER"

“I just couldn’t believe it,” said Deloise Singletary, a modest woman who seemed more stunned than ecstatic today when she learned that she had won the $5.5 million Maryland Lotto jackpot.

Surrounded by joyous children and grandchildren in her small row house near Memorial Stadium here, the 54-year-old Singletary said she’s not sure what to do with all that money right now, except, “I think I’ll get out of this rented house and buy me a new one.”

While she’s at it, she said on further reflection, “I want me a nice car so we won’t have to walk so much and be buying all those bus passes.” An instant cheer went up from the grandchildren.

Singletary, a nurse’s aide at a nearby nursing home picked the right six-number combination last week at a Lotto outlet in a neighborhood convenience store. By doing so, she became the first winner of the state Lotto jackpot.

She had purchased only one ticket and said she had no expectation of winning. The Lotto game, inaugurated Oct. 31, had gone without a winner at each of the weekly drawings, and the jackpot had grown to $5.5 million when she decided to put down her $1 for a single ticket.

The number wasn’t even one she selected herself. She let the Lotto computer give her a random combination, an option many players use. Her winning number, 09-10-16-17-28-35 was selected from a range of 1 to 40 on the Lotto bet slip –and it was the one that made her a winner.

“This is the big one,” she said today, her modesty beginning to melt just a little.

The money will come to her from the Maryland State Lottery Agency in annual installments of about $277,000 each for the next 20 years. That’s before taxes. What’s left after taxes will be hers.

The winning number was first announced on Baltimore television Saturday night, but Singletary was away visiting her dying mother at a hospital in Easton, Md., according to family members, and did not learn that she was the winner until noon today when the number was announced again on television.

“We called the lottery office and they sent somebody out here to get me,” she said, “and then we went down to the main office where I showed them my ticket number . . . . That’s all there was to it.”

Looking somewhat bewildered by her instant celebrity as reporters and television news cameramen shouldered their way into her home, Singletary said she was still too “shocked” to decide what to do with her new-found wealth. At one point, family members cut off the picture-taking and interviewing, saying she needed a rest.

“You’ve got us at a kind of odd time,” said her eldest son, Courtlon Ward, 35. “She won the lottery, sure, but she’s also very concerned about her mother on the Eastern Shore.”

Ward described the Singletarys as a “very religious family and we need some time to think all this through.”

At another point, he said, “After all this hoopla’s over, we’ll sit down as a family and discuss what to do” with the money.

The family consists of two sons, Ward and Calvin Singletary, 29, two daughters, Darlene Carter, 24, and Roslyn Singletary, 23, and six grandchildren. They all live in Baltimore.

Asked if she planned to move from the city now that her financial horizons are wider, Singletary shook her head. “I’ll keep working at the nursing home, I think,” she said. “Most of my family and relatives are here. No, I’ll stay in Baltimore.”

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