Cabot couple’s feast for well-heeled, too

Heather and Dane Moore wanted Thanksgiving in Cabot to be about the whole city - not just the less fortunate and not just the fortunate.

So when the Cabot residents looked for a way to give back on Thanksgiving, they decided to host a free dinner for anyone who wanted to come.

And in 2010, the first year of the Cabot Community Thanksgiving Feast, about 360 people wanted to come. Many of them didn’t have the resources to have their own feast, and others just didn’t have people to enjoy a feast with.

The idea is that no one in Cabot has to miss out on a homemade Thanksgiving meal.

One year, Heather Moore said, a woman called to say she could donate food, and then asked if she could come to the dinner even though she wasn’t low-income. Her son had recently died in combat, and she didn’t want to eat alone.

Of course she could come, the Moores told her.

“One of our goals is to bring the community together,” Heather Moore, 35, said.

Another year, Dane Moore said, they served a family whose house burned down just before Thanksgiving.

“That’s the real reason we put on this feast,” Dane Moore, 41, said.

Since that first year, the feast has grown to feed more than 500 and is among several free Thanksgiving dinners in central Arkansas. Also in Pulaski County, the Salvation Army and the Little Rock Compassion Center will serve several hundred people at their respective dinners Thursday.

Heather and Dane Moore and their four children will serve dinner from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Cabot Church of Christ.

The meal is served at a different church each year to pull the community together religiously, too. Past churches include Grace Family Church, Grace Fellowship Church and Cabot United Methodist Church.

People can dine in, carry out or order food for delivery.

Heather Moore said a few of the day’s 80 volunteers will be delivering to anyone who can’t come to the church.

The Moores have been given 22 turkeys and eight hams for the feast. They will take the meat to Grandpa’s Barbecue restaurant, which will then smoke it for the Moores to pick up later.

People can sign up to donate additional dishes at the feast’s website, www.cabotfeast.com. Cabot-area deliveries can be arranged by calling feast organizers at (501) 259-3799.