Greeting the last day of the last 1999 years, Emancipation Garden was alive with music, prayers, and oratory as the Virgin Islands Millennium Committee presented a "Service of Thanksgiving" at 6 a.m. Friday.
What was probably one of the island's most melodic and least military renditions of the Star Spangled Banner was sung by Charlon Richardson and Colleen Heskey. The weather cooperated, allowing the modest crowd to mingle among the garden's still-lighted trees without benefit of umbrella.
Dr. Wycherley Gumbs spoke on "Challenges of the Future," and James A. O'Bryan Jr. delivered comments on that theme on behalf of the governor.
Prayers of Intercession were offered by Frank Veraart, Simon Farrington and Mildred "Mil" Robinson, with Dr. Lawrence Benjamin singing "No man is an Island."
The program concluded with a steel pan solo by James Gittens, and "Amen" sung by the Philadelphia Seventh-day Adventist Senior Choir.
