GILLETT – Some members of the Gillett Farmers and Businessmen’s Club may have been worried when they changed the date of their well-known annual Coon Supper from the first Friday in January after the Arkansas Razorback football team was invited to play in the Cotton Bowl.
However, the dinner, attended annually by many politicians, was sold out Saturday and several club members said they are ready to switch to a Saturday night to widen its appeal.
What began as a fundraiser for the Gillett football team is still organized by the club since Gillett High School consolidated with neighboring DeWitt, with proceeds going to scholarships for Gillett area students.
There was a long line when the doors were opened at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, despite the chill in the air.
Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel was shaking hands and talking with those in line, with state Senator Stephanie Flowers nearby.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
For the $20 ticket, participants were served smoked raccoon meat served in large pans, along with sides of sweet potatoes, barbecue rice and dinner rolls.
As one political commentator noted, the dinner, which began in the mid-1940s, is an event to see and be seen. Over the years it has been dubbed Arkansas’ most notorious political event.
The Coon Supper is the state’s most notorious political event. Organizers frequently serve between 600 and 800 pounds of raccoon purchased from trappers. Pork ribs and beef brisket are served to those who are not connoisseurs of barbecued raccoon.
Scott Place, “designated head cook,” said volunteers prepared 650 pounds of coon this year, but have prepared up to 2,200 pounds in the past. They started cooking at 4:30 a.m. Saturday, he said, and in the past spent two days preparing the meat.
Former Congressman Marion Berry of Gillett has served as host for many of the dinners, missing only three, his daughter, Ann Coggin, wrote in a blog. He missed the dinner in 1996 while serving as a White House staffer for agriculture for President Bill Clinton, and when his mother was seriously ill.
Berry and his wife sent their best wishes to Saturday’s dinner, thanking friends and volunteers carrying on “our little tradition.”
The former lawmaker is undergoing chemotherapy at the Mayo Clinic and is scheduled for a bone marrow (stem cell) transplant on Friday, his daughter wrote.
Usher Frank Wolfe said 75 volunteers – “all the spare men in town” – were working at the dinner Saturday.
“Everybody knows what their job is and they do it,” Wolfe said.
Philozie English, master of ceremonies, said the dinner is about more than speeches by politicians who represent the Gillett area.
“It is for the students, not the politicians, he added.
English threw in some Cajun humor and the Coon Supper Band and Community Choir, the latter made up of local church choir members, performed.
“The whole community is involved,” English added.
Former U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers was once quoted as referring to the coon supper as “a political event that one misses at his own risk.”