By Sallie-Elizabeth Clayton, May 14, 2020 — Back in 1990, I was working as a counselor in a program that serviced untraditional colleges and universities, and I was working at Peirce College at that time. My boss said to me, “I want to send you on a conference.” [It was] a Black colleges conference that they had annually. “Would you like to go?” and so I said, “Yeah I would like to go!” He said, “It’s going to be held in Washington D.C. We will pay for your expenses. You’ll probably meet a lot of people there from Black colleges, administrators and everything. It’s a really good weekend.” I got on my train and rode myself right into Washington D.C., and we stayed at the Washington Hilton or it was a big Washington hotel that they have a lot of conferences at. Anyway, I checked in and you know I didn’t go with anybody- we had a small staff at the college so there wasn’t any other staff people who could go. So I made my way through all the exhibits and freebies and learning about people and meeting some new people.
Well, one night, I think it was the Saturday night, they have the large dinner and things going on, they had students from various colleges throughout the United States, African American students and other minorities and they did their thing, and they’re playing bands and showing things that they have learned in college. I came downstairs and I tried to buy a raffle ticket. I didn’t have money on me, it was earlier on the day, and I said, “Can I put this on my room tab?” And she was so mean to me. She said, “No you cannot. If you don’t have the money, I won’t be able to give you a raffle.” So I said “Okay.” I went back upstairs, I ran back upstairs. I don’t know why I was so intense for being a raffle, they have them all the time. I ran back up there and got some money, I said, “I should have never come down without money,” and I bought the raffle and I looked in her face to say, “Nah nah nah nah, I do have money!” so I bought the raffle. Time for this event to start the event that night, and I came down and I sat at a table where I didn’t know anybody and there was this couple there from some college and we just talked and chatted, we were watching what happened. It came time to do the raffle. I said, “I’m glad I got this, I’m going to win tonight!” They outlined the prizes, and one of the prizes was a mink jacket stole, that was the third prize. The second prize was a trip to the Bahamas for a weekend, and the first prize was a full-length mink coat for a woman at the worth of $5,000. The lady sitting next to me with her husband said, “well, I’m going to win this prize,” and I said, “I don’t think so. I’m going to win the prize.”
And we were just laughing and chatting, and all of a sudden, the lady won the stole and somebody won the trip to the Bahamas, and they said, “Now here we are everybody. This is the first prize. And we’re going to give this to some wonderful person, and hopefully, they’re sitting down here tonight.” We put our raffle out so we could see it and we didn’t think we were going to win anything. And so we were just laughing and wondering who was going to win it, and they called my raffle.
And all of a sudden, everything in my body kind of stopped working, and they repeated the number so the person could come forward. “We’d like the person to come forth, we’d like the person to come forth if they’re here and they have this number,” and they repeated it. So I touched the lady and I didn’t say anything, because all my senses were trapped- I was like a mute. I touched her and I pointed down to the ticket. I couldn’t speak, and I kept pointing down to the ticket, and she realized what I was doing and read it off. She screamed, “Oh my god!” The lady got up, ran to the front, ran all the way around the tables and everything. They said, “We have a winner! We have a winner! We have a winner!” She said, “Not me! I’ll show you, come with me!” She took all these people back to our table and pointed at me. Here, I’m sitting here, still mesmerized, can’t speak, can’t walk and these people gathered around me, pulled me up from the table, and said, “Here’s the winner everybody!” And it was me. They took me up to the front. Now, I’m not talking about a petty raffle, it had bin like you see on ‘The Price is Right’, that huge, and out of all those thousands of raffles, I was the winner. I’m still not over that after about twenty years. I still have the coat but I have not experienced anything like that before in my life.