For decades, Carolinas cooks sought her out. Long-time Observer food writer dies
Helen Moore took what she called “a small job, a little job,” to earn a little extra money for her family, and turned it into a 41-year career as the face of home cooking in Charlotte and across the Carolinas.
Moore, whose career writing about food for the Charlotte Observer stretched from 1966 to 2007, died Monday at age 88. A longtime resident of Matthews, she’s survived by three sons, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Her husband, Jack Moore, died last year.
Moore never set out to be a food journalist. Born in Tennessee, her family came to Charlotte in 1942, where Helen graduated from Central High School in 1950. She attended Woman’s College (now UNC Greensboro) and got her degree in home economics at Winthrop College, where the curriculum still included a lesson in how to kill and dress a chicken.
By 1966, Moore was married and had three sons. When the youngest started school, she decided to get a job to earn a little extra money. Her only goals, she later said, were to take a family vacation, help pay for her sons’ education and take a trip to Europe.
A friend heard there was an opening for a food writer at The Observer. Moore stopped by to meet the personnel manager, who asked if she had ever written professionally. When she admitted she hadn’t, he told her to go home and write 500 words about her life.
That night, she sat at a typewriter and struggled to come up with something she could submit. That’s when a friend called and reminded her of the words from the president of Woman’s College:
“ ‘When you educate a man, you educate an individual. When you educate a woman, you educate a family.’ “
Moore turned that into the theme for her essay – and the motto for her career. She got the job and spent the next 41 years tracking down recipes, solving cooking dilemmas and sharing the kinds of tips and homemaking information that women once depended on their local newspaper to give them.
“I thought, ‘This is the craziest thing in the world — me, writing for a newspaper,’ “ she told The Observer years later.
In her early years on the job, her assignment was simple: “Ring doorbells and interview people in their kitchens about what they were cooking. I did that all over North and South Carolina.”
By the 1970s, times were changing. An enterprising reporter couldn’t just knock on strangers’ doors, and cooks weren’t always at home anyway. Food coverage started to shift toward a consumer news beat.
Moore shifted with it, becoming a familiar guide and seasoned food reporter. She interviewed Sen. Sam Ervin at the height of Watergate (for a story on what the Ervin family made for Thanksgiving), as well as Julia Child, Erma Bombeck and natural foods pioneer Euell Gibbons.
She was sent to the N.C. coast to cover the state’s largest crab catch, and to places like Honolulu and Arkansas to judge national cooking contests. When Moore held a pound cake contest for The Observer in 1985, so many people brought cakes to the old Charlotte Observer building on Stonewall and Tryon streets, it stopped traffic.
Moore did make it to Europe — five times. Once, she had dinner in Lyon, France, with the family of French chef Jacques Pepin. She became so well known for her food coverage that she was given one of the state’s highest civilian honors, the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, by Gov. Bob Scott in the 1970s.
Moore retired briefly in the mid-1980s, but it didn’t last. Within a year or two, she began writing a weekly column for both The Observer and the News & Observer that continued until 2007. In it, she would track down lost recipes, write about church and community cookbooks and, as always, share tips on how to cook and shop better.
For someone who never intended to be a newspaper writer, she became one of the most recognized names in food coverage throughout the South. Many of her recipes, such as the pecan chiffon pie from S.H. Kress’ lunch counter, continued to get requests from readers for years. One woman was so flattered to share a recipe with Moore that her family included the honor in the woman’s obituary.
When she finally decided to end her column just before her 76th birthday, she was still amazed at her own career.
“My father didn’t think this was much of a job,” she told The Observer. “He changed his mind. But I never dreamed, in my wildest dreams, I never dreamed when I applied that I’d still be doing this.”
A small private graveside service will be held for the family on a date to be determined. Kenneth Poe Funeral Services is in charge of arrangements.
This story was originally published August 4, 2020 at 11:07 AM.
