Collecting area: UMass students

Maurice Elmer Cook: studio portrait, Massachusetts Agricultural College, 1895

Born in Marlborough in 1876, Maurice Elmer Cook moved to Shrewsbury at the age of two, when his father, Herbert, purchased property on Floral Street for his market gardening and greenhouse flower and vegetable business. Maurice Cook stayed in the family business, and joined the Massachusetts Agricultural College class of 1897 to further his education in agriculture and market gardening. He worked at the plant house while attending MAC, and often took trips with classmates to hike local fields and ranges in the Pioneer Valley area to collect specimens. Cook was a member of the College Shakespeare Club, the YMCA, the Natural History Society, the Washington Irving Literary Society, and Sergeant in Battalion Org, Company A on campus. He roomed with Harry T. Edwards, of Chesterfield, in South College his first year, and in North College with Charles Adams Peters, from Greendale, for his second and third years. Cook left college early, in November 1895, on account of rheumatism, and did not return. After a trip to Pasadena, CA for his health, Cook returned to Shrewsbury, where he would live and work for the rest of his life. He built a new property and greenhouses there after his 1906 marriage to Carrie Harrington. Both died in Shrewsbury in 1931, leaving behind their three daughters, Gertrude, Elizabeth (class of 1934), and Florence.

The Cook Papers present a detailed view into the daily life and activities of an early MAC student, as well as a look into the infrastructure and organization of the MAC campus. Cook wrote home regularly, and the over 80 letters from his two and half years at the college offer significant coverage of his classes and studies, his living arrangements and financial needs, activities on campus and in Amherst, natural and agricultural locales, travel logistics for students, and updates on MAC buildings. In addition to the rich set of correspondence, the collection includes a small but unique set of photographs of MAC grounds and students, additional photographs taken by Cook, several MAC produced postcards, and Cook’s 1894 College Shakespearean Club certificate.

A member of the Massachusetts Agricultural College class of 1907, Frederick A. Cutter participated in football, basketball, and baseball as a student, and was a member of Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity.

The Cutter collection contains photographs of the 1907 football team, the 1906 and 1907 members of Phi Sigma Kappa, and it includes a uniform from the M.A.C. basketball team, 1907, Massachusetts pennants and banners, a Lowell High School sweater from 1902, and early M.A.C. football equipment, including cleats and a nose guard.

Jeffrey Drucker was a student and photographer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1966 to 1969, where he majored in production management and was the WMUA station engineer. As a student, Drucker was a photography enthusiast, taking snapshots of events across campus, thoroughly documenting his years as an undergraduate at UMass in the late-sixties.

The Jeffrey Drucker Photograph Collection contains 387 photographs of a diverse array of campus events, including the Dow Chemical protest in 1968, parades, Roister Doisters productions, musicians like Stevie Wonder and Simon and Garfunkel performing at on-campus concerts, and iconic campus buildings. Many of Drucker’s photographs were printed in the Index yearbook as well as the University of Massachusetts Daily Collegian and give a clearly student perspective to life on campus.

Elysian Spring performing on stage, ca. 1969.

Formed by UMass Amherst students in the late 1960s, Elysian Spring proved to be a popular jazz band during their time on campus. The band’s name and member lineup changed over time, but by the time they recorded their first–and only–record in 1969, the band consisted of Rainer Bertrams, Jimmy Bridges, Lenny Ezbicki, Bruce Krasin, and Jerry Mirliani. The group was focused on improvisational, modal jazz compositions reflecting the beauty found in nature, with the band name itself referencing the Elysian Fields of Greek mythology. Elysian Spring played several venues on and off campus and were the highlight of the University Jazz Workshop concerts. The band released Glass Flowers in 1969, which features back cover notes written by Andy Haigh, Music Librarian at UMass at the time. After the album came out, and after graduations and moves, the band went their separate ways. However, their album became a cult favorite, being sought after by collectors and prompting a reissue of Glass Flowers that was released in 2018.

The Elysian Spring Collection includes the 2018 reissue of their 1969 album, Glass Flowers, color photographs, contact sheets, negatives, and a poster from a 1969 concert. There are also typed interviews with Bruce Krasin and Rainer Bertrams, and a DVD with a brief interview with Lenny Ezbicki and Bruce Krasin on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the release of their album.

The European Field Studies Program has played a critical role in graduate and undergradute training in the UMass Amherst Department of Anthropology since its inception in the late 1960s. The program provides opportunities for graduate students and honors undergraduates to gain practical experience in fieldwork by taking part in intensive projects at selected sites in Europe. The program is designed to assist students in developing concrete research plans and to begin to put their plans into effect.

The EFS collection contains correspondence between faculty and students about fieldwork, student research proposals and final reports, publications and data on the distinguished lecturers, departmental memos and meeting minutes, and range of other miscellaneous and financial material.

Cheryl Evans singing at Medford High School, ca. 1962

A lifelong activist, performer, and educator, Cheryl Lorraine Evans was born in 1946 in west Medford, MA, the eldest of five. As a high school student, Evans attended the march on Washington in 1963, and was then the first in her family to attend college, in 1964 joining the largest class at UMass Amherst to date. She graduated four years later as a pivotal organizer of African American students across campus, the Five Colleges, and in the region – during the period when Black student groups, the Black Cultural Center, and the Black Studies department all had their origins at UMass. Evans was the first elected president of an African American student organization at UMass, and remains an organizer to this day, particularly as a key connector for Black alumni and through her UMass Black Pioneers Project.

Evans went on to work at UMass as an assistant area coordinator of Orchard Hill, an area housing the majority of the students of color and CCEBS students on campus at the time, and then for the Urban University Program at Rutgers University. She worked for over a decade in early childhood education, mostly in New Jersey and New York City, then while working for the State of Massachusetts received her MA in Communication from Emerson College, partially to help her public radio show, “Black Family Experience.” Evans was the first African American woman to run for City Council in Medford, and was appointed to the Massachusetts Area Planning Council by Governor Dukakis. She taught for five years at Northshore Community College, received her PhD from Old Dominion University in 1997, and ended her career at Bloomfield College, where she was a professor for 18 years until her retirement in 2016. A prolific singer as a child and young adult, Evans was, and continues to be, a performance artist, with several theater pieces focused on Black history, all in addition to her outreach, organizing, and workshops, many focused on increasing the number of Black graduate and doctoral students.

The Cheryl Evans Papers document over 60 years of the life of the educator and activist, including childhood report cards and essays, clippings from the civil rights movement she followed and joined as a high school student, undergraduate records and ephemera, documentation of Black UMass alumni events, and records from her careers in public advocacy, education, and the theater. Evan’s time at UMass is especially well documented, including schoolwork, numerous photographs of student life on campus, social and political organization records, including contact lists of and correspondence with Black students, and the original protest demands from the 1970 Mills House protest and march to Whitmore.

The University’s first Dean of Students, William F. Field held the post from 1961 until his retirement in 1988. The 27 years Field was Dean of Students was a critical time of growth and unrest, as the University’s student population more than tripled in size and the nation-wide movements for civil rights and against the Vietnam War were reflected through student activism and protest on the University’s campus. Responsible for ending student curfews and overseeing all dorms becoming co-ed, Field also worked with minority students and faculty to support the Black Arts Movement on campus and the founding of the W.E.B Du Bois Afro-American Studies Department.

The William F. Field Papers document Field’s career as an administrator at the University of Massachusetts and specifically his role as Dean of Students from 1961-1988. The correspondence, memoranda, reports, notes, and other official printed and manuscript documents are a rich resource for one of the most important and volatile eras in the University’s history. Of particular interest are extensive files on student protests and activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s and the growing diversity of the campus student population, flourishing of the Black Arts Movement on campus and the founding of the W.E.B. Du Bois Afro-American Studies Department.

Shortly after receiving her doctorate from the University of California Berkeley in 1972, the anthropologist Sylvia Helen Forman joined the faculty at UMass Amherst. A staunch feminist and activist, Forman was known for her commitment to her students and to the political life at the university, and for her engagement in the community. She died of cancer in 1992, just 48 years old.

The nine papers in this collection were the products of studies by students enrolled in Forman’s Anthropology 497 class at UMass Amherst. All are intensive analyses of issues of race, gender, and social justice in local communities, including disability, teenage pregnancy, child care, Cambodian refugees, and attitudes toward community living and community change.

Born in East Pepperell, Mass., on May 1, 1916, the son of Edward and Angela Glow, Lewis Lyman Glow studied chemistry at Massachusetts State College during the latter years of the Great Depression. Graduating with the class of 1939, Glow continued his studies at Norwich University before serving aboard the USS New Jersey during the Second World War and Korean conflict. Glow died in East Pepperell on Sept. 23, 1986.

A well-labeled, thorough, and thoroughly personal photograph album, this documents the four years spent at Mass. State College. In addition to numerous images of Glow’s classmates and friends, his rooms at the Colonial Inn, beer parties and student highjinks such as the annual rope pull and horticultural show, the album includes numerous images of the cattle barn fire of September 1937 and the extensive damage to the MSC campus and surrounding town from the Hurricane of 1938.

John Brooks Howard, Jr., known by his family as Brooks (and as J. B. or “Gibby” to his classmates), was a popular and vivid presence on the campus of Massachusetts Agricultural College from 1926 until 1929. Born in November 1908, he arrived from Reading, Mass., as part of the class of 1930; majored in biology; was elected editor-in-chief of the student newspaper the Collegian; was a member of the honor society and the rifle team; and loved wildlife and the outdoors, especially birds. Early one morning, in the spring of his junior year, he climbed to the high branches of a tree to collect specimens. His death at age 20, after falling from the tree, stunned the campus community and broke his mother’s heart, haunting his family for a long time after.

This collection provides glimpses into the life of a MAC student in the late 1920s, with some documentation of his observations of birds and nature and campus activities. It contains an assortment of Brooks’s own papers and possessions, as well as items kept by his family after his death: three diaries, correspondence, mementos and ephemera, photographs including three larger ones in frames, newspaper clippings, a pair of wooden shoes that was a gift from his Dutch friend Hans Van Leer ‘32, and a small field microscope apparently issued to Howard by the college.