Through These Doors
It’s a crisp fall afternoon. The beat of drums can be heard in the distance as the band approaches tailgaters at Warren P. McGuirk Alumni Stadium. Your heart beats a bit faster in cadence with the drums. And then they appear, the maroon and white uniforms proudly worn by one of the best bands in the nation, “The Power and Class of New England,” the UMass Minuteman Marching Band.
Such experiences had by author Kerstin H. Becker ’96 while part of the Minuteman Band that led her to spend countless hours in the W.E.B. Du Bois Library and Special Collections and Archives. She documented the band’s growth from its humble beginnings and discovered how the group’s advancement paralleled the development of the campus itself. The result, the 200-page Through These Doors