Nourishing souls with soup and soul

Sodexo Kitch Supervisor brings music and more to Westminster

By: Walter Denison

Posted: 1/26/10

Ebony and ivory, forks and knives.

Ebony and ivory, forks and knives.

Kitchen Supervisor Martin Pike is nourishing, soothing and enriching lives.

Often framed as the most challenging and complex genres of music to play, write and read, jazz and soul have given Pike reason to believe.

"From about the age of six, music has been my greatest inspiration," he said.

The five year Sodexho chef works with salt and pepper from within and without the kitchen. He started to take a liking to soul and jazz while in the seventh grade and began playing on a piano at the age of 16.

From childhood
Pike's father left him when he was six years old. He "remembers it like yesterday," and said, his father "sat us all down-downstairs-like a family meeting and just said that we need not to sob, blah, blah, blah, that he was leaving and that we would still be in contact with him."

"It trashed me. [It] was like a bomb. It's like I'm still numb or something."

While talking in detail about his father, Pike's knee was pulsating rhythmically down and up, down and up as if a keenly attuned metronome keeping time. He said, "Dad was the most influential person in my early childhood." He described his relationship with his father as, being "like aces, man."

Pike said his earliest memory is with his father, "sitting up on dad's lap as he's eating Wheaties, getting ready to go to work. I was like my dad's favorite, 'cause there were three girls before me and he was just waiting on the boy and I was it."

His father left the family because "he went back to the rebellious high-school stages later in life," said Pike. However Pike remembers both his parents as "fundamentally sound, golden-rule types." His mother still lives with his stepfather, who Pike and his siblings "never really got along with," he said.

Because of two strokes, his biological father has been bedridden in California for the past several years he said. Pike said his father knew his son played the piano, but he'd like for his father to hear him play again, now, as he's more seasoned, "dad might even be mildly surprised," Pike said.

As a child, Pike said he would be "enthralled" when his father, a jazz drummer, and his aunt, a pianist, would play music together in his grandma's house. "That's probably why I started playing the piano," he said.

He was reminiscing about how and where he began. "We used to play basketball at the church down the street and after basketball, I'd put something in the window, like a little stick or something and then I'd come back later on at night, around nine or ten, jump through the window and play the piano in the church."

Pike was the student body president of his elementary school and recollects kindergarten as being one of the more enjoyable and pleasant grades, particularly as he would walk to and from school. "The days were sunshiny all the time. There were butterflies flying around and big fluffy clouds. We had the half days, you know [laughing]. Graham crackers and milk. Mrs. Anderson; it was good," he said.

To adulthood
Pike, 48, realized several years ago he had an addiction to alcohol. It was around the same time he "took a hard look in the mirror and decided to become a good person." The two, he said, were correlated. "I give thanks every day, to be able to overcome that daily ball and chain."

"We all have our antagonists, protagonists, ups and downs, mountains to climb, lessons we've been given. We often have that in some ball of wax," he said.

Along the lines of lessons, he has sparsely been taught music by others. Instead, through time and dedication, he has learned to read (and with great anticipation write) music by himself. He plays the black and white with only three lessons behind him and he's obtained a "natural voice" for singing sans-lessons and is "Strictly" self taught.

"I'd like lessons and I'd like to have the time and money to do lessons," he said. "No matter how great you are, there's always somebody out there who can teach you something."

Behind the grill

"He's taught me that if you put your mind to it, you can do anything," said Virginia Pike, who Pike described as his "charming," wife of 29 years and also works at the same Westminster Sodexho location. Although they work the same location, they work different schedules to avoid biases, or perceived thereof. Victoria is the lead weekend cashier, whereas Pike primarily works during the week.

Victoria described Pike as "incredible…a good person." She said he's somebody who's "very intelligent, calm and logical." To give insight to Pike's intelligence, she said he taught himself to speak Spanish-fluently.

She said when Pike is not at work, when he's at home, on a typical day, he can play the piano upwards of three hours. "It's his pleasure, or his therapy. I think he's excellent; he's amazing and I love the way he plays," Virginia said.

However when he's on the job, Pike said, "I like working at Westminster, I like the college atmosphere." One of the perks Pike mentioned amidst a list of benefits was the baby grand he takes advantage of by working at the school. Pike also mentioned how when he worked the grill, before he became a supervisor, he would sometimes hold conversations with the students. "I get along with most of the students here," he said. And although he sometimes gets nervous playing music in front of large groups, he'll still sit and play in Shaw where students congregate.

Throughout the music
Sitting, bedecked in an expected, customary, chef's attire: a grill-grease dirtied, white double button down jacket (connoting supervisor status), thermometer and pen in breast, black pants and matching black shoes, this musician can sometimes be found sitting behind the upright Baldwin adjacent to the kitchen on the south end of Shaw. He can be seen practicing a newly learned song, committing familiar chords to muscle memory or riffing out an original. The music gives students something to chew on and digest while they sit and enjoy a, now with him at the keys, sonorous meal.

However when asked his favorite place to play, Pike in silence responded with a large swift half-moon circle pointing his entire arm, index finger extended, in the direction of Jewett. From the contemplative silence he said, "…Jewett…number six. Room number six-the one with the window."

And into the future

"See that's the bad thing. If I was a Westminster employee, my kids could go to school for damn near free out here," Pike said. "And if that was the case I would stay here until they were gone and graduated, but I'm not. I'm a Sodexho employee," he said, scrambling to find and show the Sodexho logo on his shirt. "I've got nothing really to do with Westminster."

Though Pike never attended college, he wants his children to go. And he himself would even be interested in taking classes. "I need to find out how an older guy like me gets grants and things like that," he said. His plans for the future include financial security and stability, "for the wife and children."

Although Pike started playing the piano as a hobby, he would ultimately like to grow it into something larger-a living. But until then it's, ebony and ivory, fork and knives for this soul serving, soup churning, piano playing chef.