A year later, everybody wants a piece of his jackpot

ST. ALBANS, W.Va. - The letters never stop. Requests, pleas, hard-luck stories, tales to break your heart: thousands of them, enough to fill hip-high filing cabinets that line three conference room walls in Andrew "Jack" Whittaker's new office.

They come by the dozens, day after day, although it has been a year since Whittaker won the richest undivided lottery jackpot in U.S. history - $314.9-million, payable in an after-tax lump sum of $113-million - in a Christmas Day drawing.

"I can't even read them," the 56-year-old Whittaker said. "I wouldn't have any money left if I did."

The visitors keep coming, too. Two to four a day - from as far away as Washington and Idaho - bringing tales of woe to the house Whittaker owns, ringing the bell answered by his wife, Jewell.

Tell the world you have $113-million and you're willing to give part of it away, and the world will beat a path to your door.

"If I had to do it all over, I'd be more secluded about it," said Whittaker, a sewer and water contractor who built a multimillion-dollar business well before he won the jackpot. "I'd do the same things, but I'd be a little more quiet."

After winning the Powerball jackpot, Whittaker said he would donate 10 percent of his winnings to his church and start a foundation to help poor West Virginians.

In many ways Whittaker is the same unpretentious, no-nonsense, cowboy-hat-wearing guy he was before he hit the jackpot. But his natural openness is tempered by a certain wariness. Security guards watch his home and office. His daughter Brandi has lost almost all of her friends, Whittaker said.

"They want her for her money and not for her good personality," he said. "She's the most bitter 16-year-old I know. She doesn't communicate with almost anybody but me. I'm working on it, though."

For his part, Whittaker has brought some unwanted attention upon himself.

During a late-night July foray to a West Virginia strip club, Whittaker opened a briefcase filled with $545,000 in cash and cashier's checks in front of a club employee. Whittaker was drugged and the briefcase was stolen, police said.

About $14-million has been spent on charity work, almost half of it through the Jack Whittaker Foundation. And he has donated more than $7-million to three Church of God pastors in West Virginia and California.

One goal he has not achieved: spending more time with his family.

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