Couple Win Lottery, Gives Almost All Away. Do You Read Stories About Nice Things?

By: Don Caldwell


Would you give all that money away?


Excerpts italicized:

A retired Canadian couple who won $11.3 million in the lottery in July have already given it (almost) all away.


"What you've never had, you never miss," 78-year-old Violet Large explained to a local reporter.
She was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer when the couple realized they'd won the jackpot in July.

"That money that we won was nothing," her tearful husband, Allen, told Patricia Brooks Arenburg of the Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald. "We have each other."


The money was a "headache," they told the paper--mainly, it brought anxiety over the prospect that "crooked people" might take advantage of them. Several people called them out of the blue to ask for money when the news first broke that they'd won the jackpot. So they began an $11 million donation spree to get rid of it and help others, the Chronicle Herald reports:


They took care of family first and then began delivering donations to the two pages' worth of groups they had decided on, including the local fire department, churches, cemeteries, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, hospitals in Truro and Halifax, where Violet underwent her cancer treatment, and organizations that fight cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes. The list goes on and on.


Violet told the Canadian Press that they retained about 2 percent of the money for a rainy day.
"It made us feel good," Violet told the Chronicle Herald. "And there's so much good being done with that money."

Could you do the same?


In many ways money has become the most important thing in our culture. It has changed the very things we have in our culture. From how we celebrate to what we think is important (at a minimum).


We have holidays altered from it (Valentines Day, Commercialization of Easter, Mothers / Father’s Day, Christmas, Weddings). Were not these holidays about something other than the presents you buy? Were these not about something more than how extravagant they could be? Would anyone dare not buying an expensive gift on most of these holidays?


Homes keep getting larger and larger, and yet we are never satasfied. What about TV’s? Cars? Weddings? Kitchens? Clothes? Watches? Shoes?


With so much of the world so desperate to have necessities that we take for granted, why are we so consumed by excess?


What does it say about us?


Are you immunie to this as well?


What does this say about you?


What do you want to show your children?

(ORIGINAL LINK) Nicest Canadian couple in world dole out lottery winnings | The Upshot Yahoo! News