NORTH ROBINSON — In its twentieth year, and much like the years before, this year’s Colonel Crawford Athletic Booster’s Corvette raffle did not disappoint.
This year’s corvette, a Panama Yellow 1958 convertible found its way to its new home in Clayton, Alabama to Mr. Otis LeCompte.
“Somebody put it on my Facebook, and I called the school and bought four tickets. Mark [Teynor] called me and asked if I remembered buying a ticket on a car, and I said yeah, and he told me I won. I didn’t believe it at first,” LeCompte said. “I thought it was a bogus phone call, and when I found out I did win that car, well it’s been a long time since I was that happy.”
LeCompte, who lives in Alabama but is originally from Maryland, is a Vietnam army vet from the 101st Airborne, a Purple Heart recipient, a Shriner, a volunteer firefighter, and a constable.
“I want to thank everybody up there that I met because they were so wonderful and so good. Bucyrus is a beautiful town,” LeCompte said.
The odds of being the one to win the car this year were 1/10,000, with tickets being sold all over the country and with some inquiries from other countries.
Tickets for the raffle run at twenty-five dollars for one, or one hundred dollars for five. Aside from the grand prize, the early bird winner who won one thousand dollars was Robert Eisenhower from Spring Grove, Illinois, the second place five-hundred-dollar winner was Lee Deshais from New Hampshire, and the third-place two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar winner was Jeff Crouse from Illinois.
So far the Athletic Boosters have put over two million dollars into the school in projects such as the all-weather track, field house, visitors bleachers, football scoreboard, and many other things that can be found here. To see pictures of all previous winners and the cars, follow this link.