Keeping island traditions alive is getting harder because the people that passed them along have died or are very old, V.I. National Park Interpretation Chief Paul Thomas 
said he found out when he began to organize this year’s Folklife Festival.
“Too much of our tradition is gone,” Thomas said as he urged some of the hundreds of school children who gathered Thursday for the first day of the 23rd annual event to gather near Annaberg Plantation’s sugar mill for the opening ceremony.
The Folklife Festival, sponsored by the Friends of the Park group, continues from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday.
Thomas said when he went looking in St. Thomas and St. John for a basket maker to show students and adults how to weave baskets, he couldn’t find anyone. Instead he looked to St. Croix and found Eileen Huggins, he said.
“This is called God’s eye,” Huggins said, pointing to the location on the basket where she begins her weaving.
In the old days, weavers went out into the bush to find hoop vine, but Huggins said she buys her materials stateside.
Huggins said she taught herself the craft after she bought a basket from an old man living at the Herbert Grigg Home on St. Croix.
Edmond Roberts, a retired park ranger who was born on St. John, was busy making brooms out of tyre palm fronds. Roberts said that when he was a child, St. John had no place to buy household goods so people made them at home.
A couple dozen craftspeople, entertainers and others with island skills to share were on hand Thursday. St. John resident Eddie Bruce was busy teaching drumming to students from schools on St. Thomas and St. John who lined up for their turn.
“It only takes me five minutes to teach you two basic rhythms,” Bruce said.
Many adults and students got the message about the importance of learning about the island’s culture.
“We can’t forget the past and how difficult life was back in those days,” St. Thomas resident Didi Berry, who was helping chaperone her son Nicholas Berry’s Montessori School class.
Coral Hodge of St. Thomas was there to help chaperone the Seventh-day Adventist School class from St. Thomas. “Being a Caribbean person, I love this kind of thing,” she said.
A Dominica native, Hodge said that seeing the open-air oven brought back memories of learning to make bread.
Pat Martin and his wife Michele of Wilmington, N.C., made a repeat visit to Annaberg so they could explore the Folklife Festival’s offerings.
Seventh-day Adventist School student Gerard Michael Joseph, 11, said he was interested in learning more about the people who lived during slavery times.
“I think it’s important because we learn about history,” he said.
