Anyone who has attended a club meeting or banquet hosted by MATC in the last 20 years has likely enjoyed food prepared and served by Robert Anderson. For years, a catering crew worked together to supply and clean up meals provided by the school, but now only one remains. Or, as Robert likes to say, “there’s three: ‘Me, myself and I.'”
Robert moved to Milwaukee in 1993 because he was told by family “he wasn’t going to be able to find a job and he was going to get in trouble.” In a quieter tone, he recounted being from “the poorest neighborhood in a poor state…You have never even seen a place like this. You know, I used to tell my wife … poverty in Milwaukee or Wisconsin — what you think is poverty — it’s … luxury where I’m from, you know?”
So, he left behind a cooking job at a Cajun restaurant and the sweltering heat of Jackson, Mississippi. He found his place at MATC after spending a few years cooking for hotels, seminaries and luxury retirement homes. Shortly after settling in Milwaukee, Robert married his wife. He’s been married 31 years, has four children, two grandchildren and a grandson on the way.
The many days of heavy lifting, preparing food for more than 100 people and driving the MATC delivery vans come with inevitable mishaps — like a blizzard-borne car accident on College Avenue and spilling 15 gallons of hot coffee on the “brand-new, white and frosted over” sidewalks outside of the newly built Discovery World museum — all fondly recounted memories now.
Today, Robert feels called back to his days blackening catfish, but louder than that call is the desire to just slow down. He is intentional with his time spent at “parks, waterparks” or “in the yard with a football” with his grandkids. His values and physical abilities have shifted from what they were in 2005. Outside of MATC, Robert works a second job on Fridays and Saturdays.
In regards to his future at MATC, he says, “I hope [to] be here. I want to be here,” but admits, “I just want to be back in the regular kitchen.” “I want somebody else to wear these shoes.”
Wherever Robert is on campus, his dedication to a job well done will undoubtedly continue to have an impact, noticed or not. He delivers food before MATC Times meetings, and we witness his hard work every week.
From all of us at the MATC Times, thank you, Robert!
