Mass. man wins raffled Lincolnville land

LINCOLNVILLE – Blame The Boston Globe.

Hopes that a local person might win the 2.6-acre parcel that was raffled off to raise money for a new Lincolnville school may have been dashed when news of the contest went regional.

The newspaper carried a story about the raffle last month and it generated a number of ticket sales in Massachusetts.

On Sunday night, at a reception at the Youngtown Inn, the winning ticket carried the name of David Littlewood of Scituate, Mass.

Littlewood, 34, bought the ticket along with his fiancee, Jennifer Mutchler, and his future in-laws, Bruce and Donna Mutchler. “I can’t believe it still,” Littlewood said when contacted by phone Monday.

Barbara Tarantino, who donated the land on High Street in Lincolnville to help with local funding for the new school, drew the winning ticket Sunday night.

After his name was drawn, he was called on his cell phone, and had trouble hearing the news that was being relayed.

“I was completely shocked,” Littlewood said, once he had deciphered what he had been told.

He has visited Maine just once on a trip earlier this year to Bar Harbor with Mutchler; the Salt Lake City native was struck by the beauty of the state’s coast.

“It was incredible,” he said.

Tarantino, a retired teacher with ties to Lincolnville, wanted to help the town meet its goal of raising $1 million to match pledges of another $1.5 million. After she donated the land to the cause, fund-raising committee members hit upon the idea of generating more money than would be realized from selling the land, which is assessed at $34,000.

Organizers decided to sell 1,000 raffle tickets at $100 each to raise $100,000. Ticket sales hovered at about 700 into early fall, and in a push to sell the remaining tickets, committee members pitched the story to news outlets outside the area, including The Boston Globe.

Bruce Mutchler read the story, Littlewood said, and proposed buying a ticket jointly with his daughter and future son-in-law.

“He’s a very outdoors person,” Littlewood said of his future father-in-law. “He loves the coast of Maine.”

The family hopes to travel to Maine soon to take a look at their new land.

“Ideally, if we can afford to, we might put a log cabin on it,” Littlewood said. The cabin would serve as a destination for weekend and vacation getaways, he said.

Littlewood is a financial consultant currently working for Fidelity.

Dorothee Newcombe, who owns the Whale’s Tooth Pub in Lincolnville, was one of the raffle organizers. Checking her records Monday – she photocopied each raffle ticket – she reported that Littlewood purchased the ticket in early October.

The only conditions Tarantino placed on the land which had once been part of her grandfather’s farm are that it not be subdivided, that no commercial uses be allowed, and that no trailers be placed on the lot.