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…