He's $100,000 richer and $86,000 poorer all in one day, but it's by choice! John Higman of the west Arkansas town of Evansville won last month's Big Bass Bonanza and $100,000. But he surprised a family friend at Academy Sports and Outdoors in Sherwood Wednesday by giving him $86,000 of it.
John Higman had a couple of surprises in store for his good friend Floyd Gerald Hazel, Junior better known as Jerry. Along with a $500 gift card to Academy Sports and Outdoors, Higman gave Jerry $86,000 of his winnings. Higman hired Hazel 13 years ago in Texas when Hazel was out of work. Since then, the two have become more like family.
"John, he's kind of like my son," Hazel told us, "We're buddies. We fish together, we hunt together, we work together."
"I need the money but this man's done everything for me that I've asked him to do. You know I pay the man for working and he's just so much for me I just want to help him out, get him started on his life right here," says Higman.
To do that Jerry plans to buy some land and maybe build a house. But for starters he has a lot of money to spend at Academy Sports and Outdoors. To celebrate the two friends plan to go fishing, they stocked up on supplies and had a blast doing it.
Higman says giving all that money was the right thing to do for his friend. Hazel says this was quite easily the best day of his life, "I'd say other than being born, and I don't remember that," he said.
