The Virgin Islands Office of Veterans Affairs, in collaboration with the American Legion, held a Memorial Day ceremony Monday on St. Thomas honoring service members from the U.S. Virgin Islands who died in military service.
Gov. Albert Bryan Jr., Senate President Milton Potter, other officials, veterans, families and community members attended the event. The program included remarks, a roll call of deceased veterans from St. Thomas and St. John, wreath-laying and the release of 100 birds by relatives of the fallen and government officials.
Speakers throughout the ceremony focused on military sacrifice, civic participation and remembrance. Potter said Memorial Day served as a reminder that the freedoms Americans exercise today were secured through military service and sacrifice.
“There’s a silence that settles over a cemetery on Memorial Day that you really cannot find anywhere else. It’s not the silence of emptiness, it’s the silence of weight,” he said. “The accumulated weight of every life laid down, and every family that watched their loved one go and waited for a return that never came.”
He said those freedoms carry a cost that should shape how they are used.
“Every freedom we exercise — to speak, to worship, to vote, to assemble right here in this public space — was bought at a price that we did not pay,” Potter said. He added that the cost of that sacrifice is carried by families. “To those families here today, we do not only honor those whose names are carved in stone, we honor you,” he said.
He said gratitude for the fallen must translate into action. “The least we owe to those freedoms is to use them with intention: to build something, to lift someone, to refuse the easy cynicism that says none of this matters,” Potter said. “It matters. They matter.”
Bryan framed the Memorial Day ceremony as a reminder that the country’s current stability and systems were shaped through generations of service and sacrifice. He said many of the conditions Americans live with today, including peace at home and access to public services, should not be taken for granted.
“Every single thing that we enjoy in this country today — this peace, this calm — is not to be taken for granted,” Bryan said. “It’s not something that everybody has.”
He connected that idea to civic responsibility, particularly voting. “The most powerful right that we should be grateful for is the right to exercise our vote that decides who leads us, who represents us,” Bryan said. “They died for that.”
“The greatest way we recognize and honor them is not only today, but every single day we wake up in a country where we are free to determine our destiny because of them,” Bryan said.
“We are here today to pay tribute to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice,” said American Legion Cmdr. Hillis Benjamin. “They left behind families, friends, dreams and futures so that we could continue to enjoy the liberties we often take for granted.”
After the speeches, organizers read a roll call of veterans from St. Thomas and St. John who died between May 2025 and May 2026. Wreaths were placed in the cemetery, and family members and government officials were invited to participate in the ceremonial release of birds.
“May we always remember those who answered the call and never returned home,” Benjamin said. “Their watch has ended. Ours continues.”
