Morton R. Weissman, twenty-one year, of 344 Pulaski street, Brooklyn, quivered with excitement yesterday when he was informed that his ticket was among those in the first drawing in the Grand National Irish Sweepstakes in Dublin.
“I don’t believe it. It’s too good to be true,” he kept repeating in the office of the Columbia Casualty Co., One Park avenue, where he is employed as a clerk. He was unable to work for the remainder of the day.
Win, lose or draw, holders of drawn tickets will receive about $3,400, with the possibility of winning $125,000.
Yesterday was a red-letter day in the Weissman home for other reasons, too. His mother, Marcia, her face lined from financial worry and overwork, was celebrating a birthday. She couldn’t tell which one. It also marked the opening day of a store, for which the boy’s father, Joseph, had borrowed several hundreds of dollars.
But there was one shadow that cast itself across the rejoicing of the family. There was a funeral yesterday. The woman who was to have become his sister Charlotte’s mother-in-law next week died after an operation. She had been a close friend of the family.
Graduated from Boys’ High School in 1930, young Weissman’s ambition of going to college and becoming a journalist was forgotten when financial circumstances of the family were explained to him.
PLAYED SWEEPSTAKES BEFORE
During the last four years, the young man has been attending school–Brooklyn College–at night, still harboring the ambition to take his place among the literary lights of the world. I’ve never had anything published, but I have a scrapbook with all my rejection slips,” he said laughingly.
Morton has been playing the sweepstakes since he has been working. This year he was discouraged and decided to forget about “winning all that money.” It didn’t make much difference if his ambition were not realized. But his aunt finally persuaded him to try “once more.” “I have a premonition that you’re going to win,” she told him.
If he wins only the $3,400 he won’t quit work, but he expects to go to Ireland to collect his money, in any event.
“What am I going to do with the money? Give it all to my family, of course. They need it more than I do. I wouldn’t know what to do with it, anyway.”
The Weissman family came to this country from Austria in 1920. There are four children beside Morton.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
