Magnolia couple wins St. Jude Dream Home Valued at $325,ooo, house was grand prize in annual fundraiser
Banner-News MAGNOLIA — If the telephone call had come just a minute later, it would have missed them.
Melba Christie of Emerson and her husband Mikle “were just trying to get out the door to go to church,” Sunday night she said, when the telephone rang. It was a call the Christies never expected — someone from KTBS Channel 3 in Shreveport, La., was calling to inform them they were winners of the KTBS 3 St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway.
The home, valued at $325,000, is located in the Shreveport area. It was the grand prize in the annual fundraiser that helps support families of Ark-La-Tex children undergoing treatment at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. According to the KTBS website, the 2014 fundraiser raised $1,306,952.
“We’ve been giving to that, not dreaming we would ever win,” Melba Christie said Tuesday. “We were doing it for our grandchild, and other children.” She said they have donated for the past 15 years to St. Jude, Shriners Hospital, M.D. Anderson, and Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock. “We were just doing it because we were trying to help somebody.”
They purchased their ticket online in the name of Charles M. Christie, which confused some in Columbia County who knew Mr. Christie as “Mike.”
When they got to church that night, Melba Christie gave the good news to their pastor, who announced it to the congregation.
The couple went
to Shreveport Monday to tour the house. Melba Christie described it as “awesome!”
The house is located in a gated community, she said. It is an estimated 2,400 square feet. It has four bedrooms and three baths, features an open living room/ kitchen floor plan complete with an outdoor kitchen, and a twocar garage. “It has a place for my office just off the garage,” she added.
There are pros and cons to this gift, Melba Christie said, and right now it “seems so surreal. ” She and her husband will look into the tax aspect of the windfall, and other considerations. “We don’t just jump up and do anything,” she said, adding they will “just let the house sit there till we decide what to do.”
Melba Christie looks at winning this house as a message from God. “I have lost all my siblings,” she said. “We had just come back from Mobile from my sister’s funeral. It was like the Lord said, ‘I have given you a blessing. Dry your tears.’ “
According to the St. Jude website, the Dream Home Giveaway was created in 1991 by Dr. Donald Mack, a pediatric physician from Shreveport. Dr. Mack had relied on St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to treat young patients with catastrophic diseases and was the first doctor to send an out-of-state patient to St. Jude.
The first St. Jude Dream Home was constructed in Shreveport and raised $160,000 for the hospital. Since that first giveaway, the St. Jude Dream Home Giveaway has become an annual fundraiser, raising more than $23 million for the hospital.