Dick Moseley was not born in Harpswell, but he made himself a fixture here. The most obvious way was through his cooking. He ran the Pot Luck restaurant in Harpswell Center and the Harpswell Inn on Lookout Point with his wife, Anne, and cooked for the Auburn Colony in South Harpswell.
He served as a deacon at the Elijah Kellogg Church — another opportunity to cook, at church suppers. He was a longtime Boy Scout leader, even after his own sons lost interest, and food played a role there, too. Eric Field, a neighbor and former Scout under Moseley, says Harpswell’s troop always had the best food at regional Scouting get-togethers.
Moseley, who died on Aug. 27 at the age of 81, invested his time and energy into other Harpswell organizations as well. He served on the boards of the Hillcrest Cemetery Association and Harpswell News, publisher of the Harpswell Anchor. He founded the Harpswell Business Association and continued to serve as its president up to the time of his death.
There were less formal ways, too. He and Anne would host neighborhood Christmas dinners at the inn, which they owned from the mid-2000s until 2017. His neighbors along Lookout Point Road were always welcome for coffee and cookies at the Pot Luck Restaurant, behind what’s now the Harpswell Historical Society, and later at the inn.
Moseley was known for the dried soup mixes he would give out each year at Christmas, an endeavor that grew to the point that he would set up an assembly line and recruit friends and family to get them all packaged.
A graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, Moseley shared his knowledge and experience by teaching culinary arts at Region 10 Technical High School in Brunswick from the 1980s until 2005. Also in Brunswick, he sat on the board of the Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program and drove what is now called the Brunswick Link bus.
Dick and Anne Moseley were married for 52 years. They met at a Howard Johnson’s restaurant on Pleasant Street in Brunswick, where a McDonald’s is now. Dick was a manager, Anne was a hostess. Cathy Theriault, a longtime friend of the couple’s, met Dick and Anne there as well. She remembers that Dick would always make time to help the servers or the kitchen staff.
Their son Zac Moseley says that in their marriage and their business ventures, it was Anne who was practical and organized, while Dick’s philosophy tended toward having fun in the moment and figuring out the details later. So too in the kitchen: Dick was a cook, Anne was a baker. And as Dick told his stepdaughter Nancy King, when you bake, you must follow the recipe; but when you cook, you can improvise.
The Moseleys had eight kids between them. “We were the Brady Bunch of Maine,” says son Jason McLelland, recalling family trips packed into the back of a Chevrolet Suburban.
Cars play a prominent role in Dick’s story. In the late ’60s he owned a Corvette Sting Ray. After he and Anne got married, he traded his sports car for a station wagon, although he never shook the bug. “I think he chased that Vette summer the rest of his life,” says Jason.
He left a later-model Corvette and an El Camino in his garage. Dick’s interest didn’t extend — at least not successfully — to fixing up his old cars. That was largely done by his friend Dennis Field, who lives on Lookout Point Road.
Dick’s kids say he taught them to value hard work, both by example and encouragement. All of them worked in his kitchens at one point or another. One son remembers washing dishes at the Auburn Colony, where Dick worked between the mid-1980s and 2004, when he was just 8. Another has a memory of seasoning a soup at the Pot Luck before he could walk — under his dad’s direction. Growing up, his youngest sons, Zac and Jeremy Moseley, had a landscaping business that paid for Zac’s college room and board.
But Dick didn’t let his work get in the way of family time. Zac says his parents sold the Pot Luck restaurant in the early ’80s so they wouldn’t be so busy at vacation times, and they learned to ski as adults so they could take ski trips with their kids.
In those years, Dick was teaching cooking at Region 10, where many former students remember him lovingly.
One, Cindy Williams, recalls that when he said he would be retiring, she begged him to stay on until she graduated, a request he honored. Students and colleagues remember his generosity: He always had food, advice, a hug or a laugh when they needed it.
He was a devoted mentor as well, and many people saw their careers intertwine with his. Susie Bibber Taylor is one. She started as a dishwasher at the Pot Luck at 13, moving up to head cook in her senior year of high school. She too taught culinary arts at Region 10, a job she credits to his recommendation, then took over cooking at the Auburn Colony when Dick retired from that post.
And Dick and Anne loved their spot in Harpswell, looking west across Middle Bay to the Goose islands. Jason says they never wanted to leave that home, and except for his last two weeks, Dick didn’t.
Dick made his mark in Harpswell and beyond by cooking, but family and friends say there was a deeper current in his life. He cared about people, and he cared for people. He had a job to offer when someone needed it, or advice about a recipe they wanted to try. His kids say he was always in connection with his community, calling friends, passing out flyers for the Business Association, attending Select Board meetings. Many people knew Dick, says Jeremy, even if they didn’t know each other.
Jeremy hopes his father’s community will honor those values in his absence: “Hopefully, those people can become more deeply connected, and carry on that spirit of openness, that willingness to teach and willingness to be a good steward of Harpswell.”
