£7m winner who gave, gave, gave
A LOTTERY winner has left a £5.5million charity legacy after dying aged 77.
Hospital worker Barbara Wragg “gave, gave, gave” after she scooped £7.6million with her husband Ray in January 2000.
By the time Barbara died from sepsis on Monday following complications from gallstone surgery, the pair had donated £5.5million to good causes.
The Sheffield United fans said their lottery prize was “too much money to spend”, so immediately set about helping charities.
Ray, 80, said yesterday that Barbara instantly knew what she wanted to do with the money.
Pleasure
He said: “She said what we’ve got to do is to help a lot of people – and that is what we did.
“Giving so much of it away never bothered us one bit – we would do it all again.
“We enjoyed every bit of it and made a lot of people happy.”
The couple, who had been married for 56 years, used some of their winnings to secure the futures of their children Mark, Shaun and Amanda and their six grandchildren.
They moved from a council house into a new home and took cruise holidays – after previously holidaying for 31 years running in Torquay. But the lion’s share of their money went to local good causes, such as the city’s Park Hill Barbara and husband Ray celebrating their huge win at Sheffield United primary school. Large amounts were also donated to Royal Hallamshire Hospital, where Barbara served for 22 years as a night shift support worker.
The couple also gave large sums to Sheffield Children’s Hospital and a teenage cancer unit at Sheffield’s Weston Park Hospital.
Among many other donations, the couple took special pleasure in giving £12,500 to 60 veterans of the battle of Monte Cassino in Italy in 1944. The old soldiers had been struggling to find money to travel to a reunion.
“She rang and said we wanted to pay the lot,” said Ray, who didn’t need to get a passport until he was 63.
Before her death, Barbara admitted “getting a buzz” from giving away money.
She said: “It’s like when you give somebody a Christmas present. We get that all the time”. The Wraggs with pupils from Park Hill school, Sheffield, to which they donated