Lottery Prize Donor Says, ‘God Takes Care of Me’

SOMERVILLE, N.J. — “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”

--Matthew 19:21

Eleanor Boyer’s house is paid for. She has her pension. And no, even though her 1968 car is in the shop, she doesn’t need a new one.

What could she possibly want with the $11.8 million she won this month in the state lottery?

“God takes care of me,” said Boyer, a 73-year-old retiree who prides herself on her self-reliance and her unshakable faith.

Boyer decided to make her newfound wealth a gift to everyone but herself, donating the $8 million or so, after taxes, to her church and her town.

Although the donation stunned the congregation at Church of the Immaculate Conception and a community where people are kind enough to nod and smile at strangers, theologians said Boyer’s gift should not surprise Christians who have faith.

“We are constantly being called during the course of life to let go and to trust in God,” said Msgr. David Lee of the Buffalo diocese. “In her heart, she is answering the call, to share what we have with those who are in need.”

But one of her pastors, Brian Nolan, said even the most giving souls do not necessarily give it all.

“Your faith doesn’t teach you to give all your wealth away,” Nolan said. “There’s just a deep spirit there.”

A week after reporters from around the nation descended on her modest, immaculate home, Boyer appeared to be bored by the questions.

“I always said if I won I’d give half of it to the church,” she said, shrugging in her faux fur hat and trench coat as she waited for a neighbor to drive her to a meeting with the church’s financial advisor.

Boyer has spent a lifetime of giving and praying, rising at 5:30 each day to pray at home, then going to 7 a.m. Mass. She taught catechism classes and helped count collection money over the years for the 2,800-family congregation.

She also nurtured those beyond her church family, taking early retirement from a chemical company to nurse her sick mother for seven years.

On her block, next-door neighbor Dave Allena says, “she’s the one that shovels everybody’s sidewalk” when it snows.

Many organizations in this town of 12,000 about 50 miles west of New York City are celebrating a windfall, including the town’s rescue squad, the volunteer Fire Department and Great Expectations, a clinic where up to six homeless, pregnant women find shelter.

“It’s a dream come true,” clinic Director Peg Wright said of the donation. She says she wants to pay for a discharge plan that oversees the women’s progress for a year after giving birth.