A Very Successful Experiment
A troubled childhood didn’t stop Lloyd Henley ’90 from finding a steady forward rhythm
Lloyd Henley calls himself “an experiment that went well.” As he tells how he came to be a Minuteman Marching Band member, a graduate of UMass Amherst, and eventually a respected university employee, imagine a soundtrack of drums, the instrument that plays a vital role in his tale.
“I was born in the Virgin Islands, on St. Croix,” he begins. “My mother was a deaf-mute, who worked as a cook and maid in a guesthouse.”
Henley’s childhood was rife with violence. “I was shot in the back and stabbed,” he says. “Let’s just say things were happening that would lead me to not being alive much longer.”
Then, in a twist fit for Dickens, an anonymous benefactor (perhaps a wealthy guesthouse regular) arranged for Henley to attend the prestigious Fay School in Southborough, Massachusetts. When he entered Fay at age14, he was nearly illiterate as a result of his mother’s disability.
“I knew when I left St. Croix that this was a huge, huge opportunity,” Henley continues. He “busted” at Fay, earned good grades, and became class vice president.
From Fay, he went to Wellesley High. Drums, part of his Caribbean past, started beating for him again. Although he couldn’t read music and never had a formal lesson, his childhood conga playing and his abilities to imitate and memorize music earned him spots as lead drummer and president of the high school jazz band.
When Henley entered UMass Amherst in 1980, drumming became the heartbeat of his university years. “The band was a family and its headquarters was our home,” he says. He played the quads while he marched and was the band’s equipment and transportation manager. He played in two jazz ensembles, five chamber groups, percussion ensemble, orchestra, and concert band. He drummed for UMass Amherst theatrical productions. In his last year, he soloed on the drum set for the band.
Back then, most band members didn’t come to college with the rich musical background students have today. Under the direction of George Parks and Thom Hannum, Henley and his fellow musicians strove to improve until “one day, something clicked and there was no stopping us,” says Henley. The band achieved recognition and played in President Reagan’s 1981 inaugural parade.
“Most people don’t have the opportunity to be number one in something,” Henley says. “My band experience taught me how to go above and beyond and perform at the highest caliber.”
Since 2000, Lloyd Henley, now age 46, has worked as assistant director for staff-initiated programs in UMass Amherst’s Center for Student Development. You could say his job is to enrich students’ extracurricular lives the way the band enriched his. This spring, the drummer from St. Croix received the Amherst Rotary Club’s highest public service award.
As he taps a beat on a tabletop, Henley says, “Everything I achieve in life is influenced by my band experience.”