“Let the good times roll.”

The words of District 1 Councilman and Mobile City Council Vice President Fred “moonpie” Richardson would typically come out of a native New Orleanian’s mouth in French, but to Richardson that’s irrelevant. Besides, he’d just counter the variance in tongues with a little, “Mobile had the first Mardi Gras in the U.S.,” trash talking if you let him. As Mobilians, we’re all intimately familiar with the debate….

Despite the strong association between moonpies and Mobile’s Mardi Gras festivities, Richardson is referring to New Year’s Eve when he announces the familiar and light-hearted adage outside of his office on the ninth floor of Government Plaza recently.

His brainchild, the New Year’s Even Moonpie hoisting in Downtown Mobile, is something he talks about with equal parts seriousness and comedy. The first hoisting was an unmitigated success in terms of bringing people downtown to see the event, even though the papier-maché moonpie was raised from the other side of the Mobile River and a bit hard to see. But the second annual hoisting approaches, and the pie will be in downtown this time and Richardson is fired up.

“We needed something that would define Mobile over and above any other city. I had been trying to come up with something that defined us,” Richardson said. “We had First Night Mobile, but they have First Nights in other cities. But, the moonpie is ours. We got the moonpie. It’s not New Orleans’. The moonpie belongs to the city of Mobile.”

And like two pieces of graham cracker bonded by marshmallow and covered in chocolate, Richardson became stuck on the idea of making the moonpie the central aspect of his New Year’s Eve celebration. He became, in effect, the man behind the moonpie.

The man behind the moonpie

Richardson grew up in a house of 12 children in rural Conecuh County located just seven miles southeast of Evergreen, Ala.

“I wasn’t born near the fields, I was born in the field,” Richardson says of his formative years. “The house that I was born in was in the cotton field on the side of the road.”

Richardson encountered loss at a young age when his father died at the age of 49, leaving his mother, a pioneer schoolteacher, to raise her large family alone. He began his own schooling in a two-room schoolhouse where a curtain was employed to create a third space for students and a teacher.

“They taught the first grade through the ninth. These teachers taught three grades at one time. When I graduated ninth grade, we were bussed past the high school over to a training school because it was felt that because of the color of my skin I was born innately inferior to the whites,” Richardson said. “They felt it was non-productive to send me to a high school. So, I was trained to use my hands and not my mind.”

After graduating from Conecuh County Training School, Richardson sought employment at the United States Postal Service in 1961 where he would work for 31 years and ultimately retire as a manager of station and branch operations.

During his time with the Postal Service, Richardson would also attend night classes at Bishop State and the University of South Alabama working toward a degree in Political Science and History, which he ultimately completed in 1974.

When Richardson went to sign up for classes at South Alabama he was met by an advisor who said his Conecuh County Training School credits wouldn’t meet South’s requirements.

“I told him ‘Don’t fail me in the office. Give me a chance, and if you have to, fail me in the classroom,’” Richardson said of his encounter. “I graduated with honors.”

Dedicated to public service and pastry

Richardson says his 31 years as a Postal Service employee taught him how to deal with the public, the aspect he says he enjoys most about holding a seat on Mobile’s City Council.

Richardson’s motto, “Beat by Beat, Street by Street” is well known in District 1 and his all-inclusive attitude is evident in beat meetings, which he holds monthly.

“I don’t mind meeting the people,” Richardson said. “Other politicians see it as a task. I don’t perceive it that way. It’s my responsibility to meet with the people of District 1. It’s something I do proudly.”

So when it came time to hold the biggest beat meeting of his life at the beginning of our current calendar year, Richardson didn’t forget about passing the local high school en route to his separate training school and the feeling of exclusion and denial he had experienced as an adolescent. He also didn’t balk at the opportunity to bring the right treat for everyone.

“I don’t know anybody who’s turned off by a moonpie. You can be Catholic, Protestant, it doesn’t matter, they want a moonpie. I want to do something the whole city can participate in,” Richardson said.

“Originally, I thought about going up on the RSA Tower and lowering the moonpie, but (David) Bronner said there’s too many liability issues.”

Just as if he were sitting down with his course advisor at South Alabama again, but this time facing unwavering opposition in the name of insurance, Richardson kept his determination and explored alternatives. The planning would be his coursework, the event, his honors.

“Barbara Drummond said why couldn’t we get one of these crane companies to lift that thing up?” Richardson said of his consultation with the city’s executive director of administrative services and community affairs division. “So when we found a company that said they’d lift it up for free, it was on!”

“It was on!”

By “it was on,” Richardson meant people from all over Mobile and even farther reaches started pitching in any way they could.

Drummond quickly found someone to build the 750-pound cardboard-stuffed, steel cage wrapped in papier-maché, Richardson said, and with it came the donation of 500 RC Colas, 500 MoonPies from the Chattanooga Bakery, Inc., 500 hot chocolates and 500 cups of coffee.

“That lasted about 30 minutes,” Richardson said as he laughed about the memory of his event becoming a success. Ultimately the event attracted an estimated 12,500 people to Cooper Riverside Park and 15,000 to Downtown Mobile as opposed to a scant 500 the previous year.

Media coverage was another intangible that Richardson didn’t expect. He said there’s a 36-page list of all the media outlets that picked up the story about Mobile’s Moonpie celebration.

“If we would have had to pay for that, it would have cost us more than $4 million in advertising,” Richardson added. “It turned out to be more than any of us imagined. We only see it getting bigger and bigger. But, they (his fellow organizers) say I’ve got a big mouth, and they think I’m going to run out front and tell everybody what’s going to happen, so this year they’re not telling me.”

Bringing in 2010

If the man behind the moonpie were to have his way, he’d fill the Convention Center with any Mobilian with wishes to attend a pre-hoisting New Year’s Eve Ball. Richardson told Lagniappe his grand scheme would be a melding of a Mardi Gras Ball and New Year’s Eve celebration.

“We gotta continue to keep this open to everyone as long as we’re doing it,” Richardson said. For right now, though, a pre-New Year’s Eve Ball for everyone is not in the plans.

The city will, however, be hosting an Inaugural New Year’s Eve Ball at the Mobile Convention Center from 10:30 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. Tickets are $50 per person and $450 for a table of 10. Party favors, a view from a private outdoor terrace, live music from the Grand Revue Band and a midnight champagne toast and midnight breakfast buffet will be included, according to Drummond.

Tickets can be purchased at the Civic Center box office from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. from Monday through Friday. For everyone else, you can expect a refined event this year, which will include moving the moonpie over to the West side of Mobile Bay and fireworks as the midnight hour approaches.

“The moonpie is a big thing, so once it’s over on our side there won’t be any problem seeing it like there was last year,” Richardson said.

Jimmy Hall and Wet Willie will headline the festivities at Cooper Riverside Park. Parkgoers can show up any time around 8 p.m.

While Richardson certainly thought there was an outside chance at a second New Year’s Eve Moonpie hoisting, he isn’t going to forget the humble beginnings of last year.

“When people heard what we were doing down here in Mobile, Ala. with the moonpie, they laughed,” Richardson said. “They aren’t laughing now.”

Richardson points out other experiences in his positions as District 1’s city councilman when he thinks of the risk involved in spending the initial $9,000 for last year’s celebration.

“I take a lot of heat for traveling the world to promote the city of Mobile. Well, that’s fine. And I’m against traveling if you aren’t ready to get the interest of other world leaders, but (former mayor) Mike Dow took me under his wing and showed me how to market this city, and that’s what I’m doing,” Richardson said. “It takes bold leadership to make people remember where Mobile, Alabama is on the map.”