Alexander Knecht unpacked his violin and sheet music and slipped into Marvin Baker's dimly lit hospital room.
“Hello, Mr. Baker, is it OK if I play a hymn for you?" he asked brightly.
The 81-year-old patient, bedridden by a series of illnesses and unable to respond, stared blankly at the wall. Knecht lifted his bow and played “Rock of Ages," the lilting sounds swiftly displacing the room's cold quiet.
“I hope you liked that," he said.
Silence.
“I play for him every week," Knecht said, stepping into the corridor. “He can't speak very well, but he appreciates the music, I think."
Since he began playing violin at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial VA Medical Center in Loma Linda last February, the earnest 17-year-old has grown used to the strokes, dementia and crippling disease afflicting so many here.
He wanders the halls, dipping in and out of rooms, regaling veterans with solo selections from Mozart, Bach and, occasionally, the Charlie Daniels Band.
With those who can't speak, he's learned to read the small signs of awareness: a faint smile, a finger tapping. Signs or no signs, he's convinced that his music can free them, if briefly, from the prisons of their own bodies and minds.
“When the world is as small as your room, there really isn't much to do," said the thin, rangy teen. “This brings a little of the outside world to them."
Paul Winters, 72, bent and twisted like an old tree from arthritis, calls Knecht “my favorite violinist."
“I like country and religious tunes, but I never know what he will play," he said in a raspy voice, hunched in his wheelchair. “I just take potluck."
Knecht isn't the VA's only volunteer -- there are escorts, greeters and therapy dogs -- but he is the sole violinist.
“He does this on his own. It is completely his own ministry," said Diane Gellentien, the hospital's chief of voluntary services. “He came to us and said he wanted to do it, and we encourage more people to do the same."
