Metro

New York lotto poster boys blew it all, but not their friendship

When New York lottery winner Lou Eisenberg met Curtis Sharp in 1982, he knew right away they’d be pals.

Sharp, a maintenance man from Newark, had just hit the $5 million jackpot — exactly a year after Eisenberg famously scored the same amount, which at the time was the most in New York history.

“Because I had won $5 million in 1981, I got invited to Curtis’ Lotto event,” Eisenberg recalled.

“I liked him because he reminded me of me! He was dressed to the nines and came in singing a song. Curtis had his wife on one arm and his mistress on the other! I laughed myself silly.”

What was supposed to be a quick meet-and-greet between the men evolved into a friendship that would last a lifetime — and, as it turns out, far longer than their winnings.





Eisenberg, now 90, and Sharp, 80, both went from blue-collar working stiffs to millionaires and then back to everymen again, struggling to make ends meet.

“In the end, I’ve got him, he’s got me — but neither of us have any more money,” Eisenberg told The Post.

Sharp added, “We’ve got our stories, and we share those in telephone calls at least once a week. We talk all the time. We’ve been with each other through the rich good times — and now we’re together through the old and broke times.”

Eisenberg was 53, living in Brooklyn and earning $225 a week as an office light-bulb changer when he bought his usual six numbers from a Midtown convenience store in November 1981.





This time, he won big.

After taxes, he received the first of his 20 payouts of about $200,000 a year and quit his job.

“For 53 years, I’ve been eating bread. Now I want to eat cake,” he said at a press conference held by New York Lottery.

Overnight, “Lucky Lou” became a celebrity and performed his happy-go-lucky shtick on the “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” and as a regular guest at local city events.

A year later, lottery officials asked Eisenberg to attend the jackpot party for Sharp, then 44.

“They asked me to help greet him,” Eisenberg recalled. “I was the first Jew that won $5 million in New York, he was the first black that won $5 million in New York. And we were both just working stiffs.”





Sharp was living in Newark and earning $300 a week as a maintenance man when he asked a buddy to buy him a lottery ticket from a store near the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

After his win, Sharp, like Eisenberg, began receiving a similar annual payout.

“It was $239,005 a year for 20 years,” he recalled, which was more than Eisenberg’s because Sharp was living in Jersey and paying lower taxes than his buddy in New York.

When lottery officials noticed how similar the two winners were, they were paired for a few local lottery commercials.

After the publicity died down, the two continued to meet and talk about the wacky world of winning the lottery.

Eisenberg talked about his fun trips to Paris and gambling in Las Vegas. He also confided about the strain of his divorce, about his young new wife — and the subsequent divorce from her, too.





His alimony payments to two women began eating up more than half of his take-home winnings, he complained to Sharp.

He had to hand his Brighton Beach condo over in one of the divorce settlements.

When friends and neighbors asked Eisenberg for money, he happily handed it over, he added.

“It was easy come, easy go. There was always a check coming soon,” Eisenberg said.

Sharp knew exactly what his friend was going through.

Several divorces and a series of fancy cars ate up Sharp’s money, never mind the dough he was dropping at casinos.

Despite hanging on to his day job for another eight years in order to qualify for a pension, Sharp acknowledged that he was going on a lot of booze and drug benders.

He was also giving a lot of the money away to friends and relatives.

Sharp’s favorite thing was donating to charities, and he once cut a check for $15,000 to help victims of the Ethiopian famine.

“It came in, it went out,” Sharp said.

“But neither me nor Lou thought it would end.”

Sharp and Eisenberg are far from the only lottery winners with rags-to-riches-and-back-to-rags stories.

Evelyn Adams, who famously hit the New Jersey lottery not just once but twice, in 1985 and 1986, for a total of $5.4 million, is now barely scraping by at age 64.

She blew through her money years ago, mainly by gambling and giving it away to those who asked.

“Honey, I’m the type of person who would give people the shirt off my back — and that’s what happened,” she said in an interview in 2004.

Adams didn’t return recent phone calls from The Post, but her daughter, Traci, said her mom is living in a trailer in New Jersey.

“She’s good. She’s alive, she’s in good health,” Traci said.

William “Bud” Post III — who won a $16.2 million Pennsylvania lottery jackpot in 1988 — wasn’t as lucky health-wise, or much any other way.

Post, whose brother was once arrested for trying to have him murdered in order to inherit his money, died alone in 2006 at the age of 66 from physical ailments. He had been living off food stamps at the time.

And Virginia native Jack Whittaker had big plans after he won a whopping $314.9 million in the Powerball multistate lottery in 2002.

The construction boss opted for a lump-sum payout of $113 million to start his life of Riley. But within five years, Whittaker had squandered every cent on bad investments and was being sued by Caesar’s Atlantic City for bouncing checks.

Eisenberg and Sharp never thought money would be a problem for them — because they didn’t expect to be walking the earth for so long.

“I started getting payouts at 53. I thought, ‘Well, I’ll probably be dead by 73, and that’ll be that,’ ” Eisenberg said.

“Why plan for after that?”

Sharp agreed.

“The way I was living, I’m surprised I didn’t die a long time ago. But, here I am,’’ he said.

Neither of the friends set aside a dime for their old age, they said.

Months after Eisenberg received his final payment in 2001, he was broke and living in a mobile home.

He now lives in the town house of a deceased aunt on the condition he help take care of her disabled adult daughter.

Eisenberg said he receives about $1,800 a month in Social Security and a small pension.

“I have plenty of food and everything I want,” he said. “But when I go to the track, I can only take $30 or $40 with me.”

Sharp’s pension and Social Security equals about $2,600 a month, he said.

He eventually became a Baptist minister and moved to Antioch, Tenn., where he now ministers to the prison population.

Sharp said he still gives away a lot of his monthly pension money and lives a very basic life.

“If someone needs something, I help out,” the minister said.

Neither Eisenberg nor Sharp regrets the highs and lows that came from hitting it rich.

“It was great,” Eisenberg said. “Are you kidding?”

For his 90th birthday in April, Eisenberg’s girlfriend paid to fly Sharp in from Antioch to their place in Florida for a party.

“It might be Lou’s last birthday, and the only thing he wanted was to spend it with Curtis,” said the gal pal, Jane Anne Walker, 66.

For his part, Sharp said he was happy to take his “old bones” and hop on a flight to West Palm Beach.

And Sharp had the perfect gift for his best friend.

“Lotto tickets, of course!’’ he said.

Sharp said he bought the pair $15 worth of Powerball, Mega Millions and local state lottery tickets.

“We didn’t win,’’ Sharp said. “But I played again the next week. I almost hit!’’

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