NEW YORK – Last June, a man named Roy Cockrum walked into a Kroger supermarket to buy a Powerball ticket. He won the largest lottery jackpot in the history of Tennessee: $259 million, which he took in the form of a lump-sum, after-taxes payment of $115 million. He already knew what he was going to do with the money.
“I had made a mental note throughout my life of all the people who were going to get my support should I ever have a pile of cash,” he said. “I think everyone who plays the lottery knows what they would do with the money, were they to win. Wouldn’t you?”
And what do most lottery winners covet?
“Strippers and cocaine for some of them,” Cockrum said, dryly. “For some people, winning the lottery can literally kill them. My goal is to stay off the TV shows about lottery winners.”
Which brings us to the Four Seasons hotel here Wednesday night. Cockrum had flown to New York in a private jet from Tennessee to give what he said was his first, and only, face-to-face interview since his day of great good fortune. Although warm and forthcoming, he was clearly doing so with some reluctance. (“Why are you getting this?” he asked at one point, before breaking into a smile.) The reticence, he said, came from the overwhelming number of requests for money that, he said, invariably spikes every time his name pops up in the media.
“There are a lot of scams out there that use my name and tell people that if you do this or that, then Mr. Cockrum has a $600,000 check for you,” he said. “Please write about those. I want people to be protected. Everyone who is getting money from me knows they are getting money. Within hours of me winning the lottery, every URL involving my name was snapped up. Even ‘Roy Cockrum Foundation.’ It was really shameful.”
But aside from the details of his security arrangements, he was willing to talk about anything. Most especially what he is doing with the money.
Cockrum, who studied theater at Northwestern University, worked as an actor and stage manager and later became Brother Roy with the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Episcopal order on the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge, Mass., does not plan to spend his money on drugs and prostitutes.
Rather, he intends to give away the majority of his newfound riches to the nonprofit American theater, with a heavy emphasis on Chicago, where he has made his first two huge grants — one to the Goodman Theatre, one to the Steppenwolf Theatre. These are the only grants, he said, that he expects to make this entire year.
He has a very clear mandate. He wants to support large theater companies doing massive, out-of-the-ordinary artistic projects — the kinds of epics you might see at the National Theatre in London, which has extensive government support.
“I do not intend to fund buildings or endowments or to buy tables at galas,” he said. “And I am well aware that, for an organization without the right infrastructure, huge grants like these can be disastrous. So I intend to support productions at theaters with the capacity to manage and mount them.”
To wit: Cockrum’s first grant is to fully support that famous maximalist Robert Falls and the Goodman’s new production of “2666,” an adaptation by Falls and Seth Bockley of the huge Chilean novel by Roberto Bolano.
The other, announced here, is funding the Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s production of Tracy Letts’ expansive new play, “Mary Page Marlowe,” a large-cast show that uses multiple women to play the same titular character at different stages in her life.
The amounts of the grants have not been made public, but Cockrum said both theaters’ requests had been granted in full and I was not corrected (just smiled at), when I speculated that they might total at least $2 million.
In fact, on winning the lottery, Cockrum’s first call was to an attorney, to find out if there was a way to stay anonymous. (His second was to his friend, Benita Hofstetter Koman, to ask her to run his foundation).
Although anonymity is possible in 19 states, Tennessee is not one of them.
“My name and hometown had to be made public,” he said. “So that meant I was found. So I thought it better to try and control the press. So I made one public show.”
There was a bit more publicity when Cockrum made a big donation to Doctors Without Borders at the height of the Ebola crisis, but things have, he said, been quieter since then. “I really have not been on camera,” he said. “Although every time there is another big lottery winner, my name shows up again.”
One has to ask a man in this situation, especially such a thinking man, if money has brought happiness.
“Frankly, I had no complaints about my life before I won the money,” he said. “But I don’t deny that I like flying private — it allowed me to get in today despite the high winds — and I have a very nice suite upstairs. Very nice. But I have no desire to be a spokesperson for Powerball, which is a brand, or to talk about my system for winning the lottery, which people always ask me about. I have no desire to buy six planes. My real satisfaction is to see people’s faces when I can make it possible for them to fulfill artistic dreams that they had put on hold for a long time. That is why I pinch myself every morning. It has nothing to do with the numbers in my bank account. The American theater is in desperate need. There is nothing I could do with this money for myself that would make me feel as good.”
But why not support a broader portfolio, or the usual foundational mix of education, arts, mental health, anti-poverty and so on?
With that, Cockrum took a sip of a very nice glass of wine, looked up and stared me in the face.
“I think society is in trouble when culture is ignored,” he said. “People can be duped by the first political wind that blows their way. They can be persuaded to vote against their own self-interest. Culture is what enriches us all. We are all in trouble when the arts are not supported, when there is no seed of change.”
And how, now, does he plan to avoid being overwhelmed? “I get pitches from all kinds of places,” he said, smiling. “One of my favorites was a ‘Nutcracker on the Prairie’ in Kansas, which I am sure is a lovely thing, but not just something we fund. I screen. I react when confronted.” You don’t apply for one of his grants; you get invited to apply.
“When I was in the order, I was taught boundaries,” he said, telling a story about how he initially had handed out cash when a homeless person had come to one of the monastery’s gates, only to be corrected by one of his senior brothers, who pointed out that there would be a line of people the next day, after word got around, and then he would be able to help nobody.
“That is where I was trained that boundaries are essential,” he said. “There are people in need all over the world. I hear from such people every day. Every day. But without boundaries, I have nothing left.”
So the artists of the theater are within the walls: “What better way to support actors than to give them a chance to be hired at a major theater when they would not otherwise be hired? The best way to help starving artists is to give them a chance to work.”
And what if some massive project he funds turns out to be a creative failure? Or a big, costly waste of time?
Cockrum laughed. “I am still human,” he said. “I could get rooked. But I’m not very interested in the success of the play. I am interested in the theater, writ large.”
“You know,” he went on. “I trained as an actor and then I lived in a monastery for six years, under a vow of poverty and some of it in silence. So I’ve been pretty well trained in the evaluation of the human heart.”
Twitter@ChrisJonesTrib
