Volunteers serve meals Thursday during the annual Messalonskee Community Thanksgiving Dinner at Messalonskee High School in Oakland. From left: Kim Gooding, Barbara Burgess and Burgess’ daughter, Jen Lagasse. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

OAKLAND — The Messalonskee Community Thanksgiving Dinner has been feeding hundreds of people for decades. Ask its organizers and others exactly when the event began, however, and almost everyone has a different answer.

Mixed vegetables warm in the foreground Thursday as volunteer Jordan Pelletier uses a large whisk to stir gravy during the annual Messalonskee Community Thanksgiving Dinner at Messalonskee High School in Oakland. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

The Thanksgiving Day gathering draws many volunteers, who cook and hand out or deliver thousands of meals to anyone who wants one.

The event was started decades ago by Oakland businessman Edward “Bud” King, who died in 2020. He was 97.

Longtime volunteer Jessica Garten said she remembers it beginning in 1987 at a local church.

Mike Perkins, who has organized the event for decades, said it began a few years earlier.

“It was definitely mid-’80s, I think ’85,” Perkins said Thursday, while passing meals along to be delivered to central Maine families. “You know, I’m not sure, now that you mention it.”

Advertisements for and newspaper coverage of the event over the years do not help clarify when the community dinner began.

Volunteer Cavan Gooding, 14, left, hands packaged pie slices Thursday to Brian Ames of Fairfield while loading Ames’ vehicle during the annual Messalonskee Community Thanksgiving Dinner at Messalonskee High School in Oakland. Ames says he is about to deliver 11 meals. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

A 2010 advertisement for the meal said it started in 1989. A 2023 advertisement said it was the 34th time the dinner was being held, as did another ad four years prior, in 2019. Advertisements for the dinner only began appearing in the newspaper in the early 2000s.

The earliest reference to the “Messalonskee Thanksgiving Meal” appears in a 1993 Morning Sentinel story reporting the dinner was started in 1989. None of the stories written afterward has consensus on when the community meal was initiated.

One story reports it began in 1976. An obituary for King includes that he started it in 1990, as do stories from 2005, 2008 and 2021. A story from the Portland Press Herald pins its origin to 1989.

The event has grown substantially since King began it some time ago. Only 50 people attended the first dinner, King said in a 2014 Morning Sentinel story. This year, organizers said they expected to serve more than 1,000 people.

King began the dinner with himself, his family and a few friends. Now, local Girl Scout troops help bake pies for the event, high school students plate the meals and volunteers deliver them.

The year in which the community dinner began in Oakland is likely to remain a Thanksgiving mystery. In all likelihood, King was not even counting the years, and did not consider them the important part.

“To me, the families are first,” he said in a 2015 interview.

Heather Hibbert, left, rests her head on Al Penney Sr.’s shoulder Thursday as Penney sings an Elvis Presley song during the annual Messalonskee Community Thanksgiving Dinner at Messalonskee High School in Oakland. Penney is dressed as Elvis for the occasion. Hibbert of Winthrop is Penney’s stepdaughter. She is joined by her mother, Eileen Hibbert-Penney, right, of Benton and other family members. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel