Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Defiance, duty define feedings’ founder
Lack of compromise, cash dog advocate for homeless
For more than 25 years, Arnold Abbott has been dishing up hot meals to the homeless, earning national recognition while frustrating Fort Lauderdale officials who say his weekly beachfront feedings are illegal.
Now 93, Abbott fears his days of ladling up savory lamb stew and compassion may be nearing an end. Financial support is dwindling; recent talks with the city and other charities have stalled over Abbott’s refusal to end the beach feedings; and he has failed to find a successor to carry on what he describes as his life’s mission.
At least some of the crisis Abbott faces stems from his admitted intransigence regarding efforts to get him to move his outdoor feedings off the beach, where city officials say gatherings of homeless damage Fort Lauderdale’s image.
Support has faded from even those who have served on his board of directors. “We don’t have a strong board,” he said. “I’ve got about 15 names, but if we get six [to a meeting] it’s good.”
Two board members have resigned in recent months.
“It’s not looking very good,” said Abbott, who
uses a walker and has been hospitalized several times in the last year after falls. “Rumors that I have died don’t help.”
The legacy Abbott hoped to leave is imperiled. “We are in our 26th year, and my dream has always been that Love Thy Neighbor would continue long after my demise, and into perpetuity,” he wrote in a letter he sent out under the heading “Emergency Appeal!!!”
Abbott blames his own “complacency” for some of his troubles. In his March letter appealing for donations, he said he relied too heavily on a family foundation that recently “gently informed” him it could no longer give him $60,000 a year, or about half of Love Thy Neighbor Fund’s annual budget.
Abbott declined to name the foundation.
Abbott also acknowledges that his insistence that he will never quit his Wednesday evening feedings at the beach has been an obstacle to working with other charities interested in cooperating with him to establish a permanent feeding site near downtown. The city of Fort Lauderdale has even been involved in recent talks to work something out.
But any deal that would require him to stop feeding homeless at the beach is a non-starter, Abbott said. “It’s a quid pro quo,” said Abbott. “And I am not pro quoing.”
Hope South Florida, a Fort Lauderdale charity that provides about 200 meals each day to the homeless at a rotating roster of churches in Broward County, has offered to support Abbott with food and indoor locations to serve meals.
“But he has refused,” said Ted Greer Jr., CEO of Hope South Florida. “In this crisis he is in, we’ve said, ‘We’re here.’ But we refuse to provide meals outdoors.”
Greer said he applauds Abbott’s “passion and his compassion. At his age he could be doing other things. What I don’t support, if there is an alternative to provide for homeless, consider it.”
Until recently, Abbott thought he had found his successor in Lesley ClarkSmith, a three-year volunteer and board member he named vice president of Love Thy Neighbor. But Clark-Smith stepped down from the board as vice president about four months ago, saying she needed to spend more time on her family business.
Clark-Smith said that she and other board members were troubled by Abbott’s unwillingness to compromise on the beach feedings.
“I would like to see all these groups working together, not trying to outdo each other,” said ClarkSmith, who still volunteers with Love Thy Neighbor to prepare and cook food. “What we were voicing was that our goal is to feed people.”
About three months ago Irene Smith also resigned from Abbott’s board, citing a “lack of clarity with operational procedures that would make sure the organization continues,” she said. Like Clark-Smith (no relation), Smith also still volunteers her time and believes in Abbott’s mission to the homeless.
But Abbott’s close-tothe-vest management style is “very frustrating,” Smith said.
As an example, Smith said, some board members have pressed Abbott for more details regarding the operation of the culinary training program Love Thy Neighbor runs under the umbrella of the Broward County Public Schools.
“We’ve asked several times, and we don’t get the answers,” Smith said.
Abbott made international headlines in 2014 when police repeatedly cited him for breaking city ordinances designed to stop his feedings at Fort Lauderdale Beach Park. Attorneys for Abbott challenged the ordinances on constitutional grounds, but in September 2016 a federal judge upheld the laws.
Still, the city stopped enforcing the ordinances, in part because of the negative publicity. In December 2014 Abbott was named “Advocate of the Year” by the Congressional Hunger Center and the National Coalition for the Homeless.
Born in Beverly, Mass., Abbott was attending the University of Pennsylvania in 1941 when the U.S. entered World War II. He dropped his pre-med studies to enlist and ended up in the infantry, seeing action in North Africa and Italy. He was awarded two Purple Hearts.
Returning to Pennsylvania after the war, he earned a degree in journalism but for the next 40 years worked as a traveling salesman, writing poetry and short stories on the side. He also served on a Democratic state committee, and in 1964 fought to win seats at the nominating convention for black delegates from Mississippi.
In 1970 Abbott moved to Florida, where he met his wife, Maureen. For several years they ran a jewelry business, even as he continued to travel.
Abbott said he formed the Love Thy Neighbor organization as a tribute to his wife. She died in 1991 from a fall at the couple’s home. She was 40.
The right to feed the homeless in a public beachfront park is a civil rights issue, Abbott said, the type of cause that he has fought for all of his life. “I am inviting 150 friends to the beach and serving them dinner,” Abbott said.
“I am a scofflaw,” Abbott said proudly this week in an interview at The Sanctuary, a Fort Lauderdale church where he and volunteers were preparing and cooking barbecued chicken, mashed potatoes and mixed salad to feed up to 250 people at the beach Wednesday and downtown today.
“The city complains that we affect tourism, but I think we attract people,” Abbott said. “Some end up helping us serve. We are a tourist attraction.”
If the homeless feedings are a tourist attraction, it is not the one that Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler and other city officials want.
Seiler said he would like to get Abbott to quit setting up tables and serving meals to the homeless in order “to preserve our image as a world-class destination, and to make sure the beach is a family-friendly destination.”
Seiler said, “Arnold Abbott is a nice guy who wants to do good. We need people like Arnold in our community, feeding in the right places. When done in the right way, in the right location, he is a tremendous asset.
“It would be sad if he wasn’t able to continue. We are not cheering for him to fail.”
“I am inviting 150 friends to the beach & serving dinner.” Arnold Abbott