Sept. 15, 2001 – Regional U.S. Coast Guard officials are encouraging St. Thomas and St. John commercial boaters to attend a meeting on the morning of Sept. 28 to go over marine safety regulations coming into effect this season and to review those already in place. The regulations, which were actually adopted in 1995, are amendments to the Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping and come into full effect Feb. 1, 2002.
Billed as The Small Passenger Vessel Industry Meeting, the event is aimed at the owners and operators of commercial vessels in the territory who are licensed to carry more than six passengers. The Coast Guard is asking that those planning to attend let the Marine Safety Detachment office on St. Thomas know by Sept. 21.
The officer in charge of marine inspection regionally, Cmdr. Joseph Servidio, who is based in San Juan, is urging and encouraging all commercial boaters to attend. "We need to continue working together toward our common goal of a partnership in safety," he said. The meeting was timed to coincide with the traditionally slow time of year for boaters, he noted.
Lt. John Reinert, supervisor of the Marine Safety Detachment on St. Thomas, said the Sept. 28 meeting "is the only one planned at this time."
Servidio said the amendments are of particular interest to local boaters on inspected vessels weighing 100 gross tons or more and carrying passengers between the USVI and the British Virgin Islands.
Other topics on the agenda for the meeting include requirements and responsibilities for vessel maintenance and administration, chemical testing, marine casualty reporting and pollution prevention.
Servidio said anyone with questions or suggestions on topics to be addressed should contact Reinert at 776-3497. That is also the number to call to reserve space for the meeting, which will take place at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Sept. 28 from 8 a.m. to noon.

Sept. 15, 2001 – Regional U.S. Coast Guard officials are encouraging St. Thomas and St. John commercial boaters to attend a meeting on the morning of Sept. 28 to go over new marine safety regulations coming into effect this season and to review those already in place.
Billed as The Small Passenger Vessel Industry Meeting, the event is aimed at the owners and operators of commercial vessels in the territory who are licensed to carry more than six passengers. The Coast Guard is asking that those planning to attend let the Marine Safety Detachment office on St. Thomas know by Sept. 21.
The officer in charge of marine inspection regionally, Cmdr. Joseph Servidio, who is based in San Juan, is urging and encouraging all commercial boaters to attend. "We need to continue working together toward our common goal of a partnership in safety," he said. The meeting was timed to coincide with the traditionally slow time of year for boaters, he noted.
Lt. John Reinert, supervisor of the Marine Safety Detachment on St. Thomas, said the Sept. 28 meeting "is the only one planned at this time."
High on the list of issues to be addressed are amendments to the Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping that were adopted by international convention in 1995 and come into full effect on Feb. 1, 2002. Servidio said the new requirements are of particular interest to local boaters on inspected vessels weighing 100 gross tons or more and carrying passengers between the USVI and the British Virgin Islands.
Other topics on the agenda for the meeting include requirements and responsibilities for vessel maintenance and administration, chemical testing, marine casualty reporting and pollution prevention.
Servidio said anyone with questions or suggestions on topics to be addressed should contact Reinert at 776-3497. That is also the number to call to reserve space for the meeting, which will take place at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Sept. 28 from 8 a.m. to noon.

Sept. 15, 2001 – Regional U.S. Coast Guard officials are encouraging St. Thomas and St. John commercial boaters to attend a meeting on the morning of Sept. 28 to go over marine safety regulations coming into effect this season and to review those already in place. The regulations, which were actually adopted in 1995, are amendments to the Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping and come into full effect Feb. 1, 2002.
Billed as The Small Passenger Vessel Industry Meeting, the event is aimed at the owners and operators of commercial vessels in the territory who are licensed to carry more than six passengers. The Coast Guard is asking that those planning to attend let the Marine Safety Detachment office on St. Thomas know by Sept. 21.
The officer in charge of marine inspection regionally, Cmdr. Joseph Servidio, who is based in San Juan, is urging and encouraging all commercial boaters to attend. "We need to continue working together toward our common goal of a partnership in safety," he said. The meeting was timed to coincide with the traditionally slow time of year for boaters, he noted.
Lt. John Reinert, supervisor of the Marine Safety Detachment on St. Thomas, said the Sept. 28 meeting "is the only one planned at this time."
Servidio said the amendments are of particular interest to local boaters on inspected vessels weighing 100 gross tons or more and carrying passengers between the USVI and the British Virgin Islands.
Other topics on the agenda for the meeting include requirements and responsibilities for vessel maintenance and administration, chemical testing, marine casualty reporting and pollution prevention.
Servidio said anyone with questions or suggestions on topics to be addressed should contact Reinert at 776-3497. That is also the number to call to reserve space for the meeting, which will take place at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Sept. 28 from 8 a.m. to noon.

Sept. 15, 2001 — Sweltering heat added to the emotional heaviness in the air Friday afternoon as about 50 people gathered in downtown Christiansted to honor the thousands of victims in Tuesday’s terrorist attacks on the mainland.
Before the memorial started at the Christiansted bandstand, a fire truck led a procession of employees from the Property and Procurement Department down King Street. It was, Commissioner Marc Biggs said, a show of support for the victims of the attack and the entire country. To emphasize that sentiment, P&P employees wore T-shirts with messages of love for both New York and Washington, D.C.
Prayer vigils were also held at the legislative chambers in Frederiksted and in the terminal of the Henry E. Rohlsen Airport.
An hour in the unrelenting noonday sun was a burden those at the memorial service were willing to bear. The emotional gathering was led by Lt. Gov. Gerard Luz James II and the Rev. Lester White. Also speaking were Pastors Vincent Gordon and Reuben Vessup and Apostle Eleanor Estrada.
James, a U.S. Army veteran, acknowledged the immense loss and grief the country has experienced since Tuesday but urged people to remember, "We still have our freedom and our democracy."

Sept. 14, 2001 – Blanche Sasso is like a flesh-and-blood history book. Celebrating her 102nd birthday on Saturday, she speaks with a twinkle in her eye and a clarity of remembrance that transports the listener back to the days of Danish rule. More than a storyteller, Sasso is a living territorial treasure who has made an indelible print on the Virgin Islands and its people — and continues to do so on a daily basis.
Remembering the Danish days
Blanche Mary Joseph was the youngest of five children born to Ernestine and Julius Joseph on Sept. 15, 1899, on St. Thomas, then part of the Danish West Indies. Her mother's ancestors were native Caribbean Amerindians, and her father's background was part Dutch, part Sephardic Jew.
A century ago, life was much different than it is now. "Men all wore suits, and ladies had blouses with high collars and skirts that went down over their ankles," Sasso recalls. Fabric stores and seamstresses were the way of obtaining a wardrobe, for there were no ready-made clothes
"Main Street was dirt when I was a girl, and there were posts along the streets to hitch donkeys," she recalls. "No one really traveled up in the hills or to the east end of the island. Everything was centered around town."
Although little of the Danish language was spoken or taught back in those days, English being the primary language, the Danes exerted a big influence over Sasso for the first 17 years of her life.
On the day that the islands were transferred to the United States, in 1917, "I remember we stood up on the top of the fort [Fort. Christian] and looked down into the Barracks [the Legislature Building]," Sasso says. Since her father was a government official, the family received a special invitation to view the ceremony from the vantage point of the fort ramparts. Most of the crowds flocked along the small street that ran in front of the Barracks.
The transfer ceremony began at mid-day, in Danish. Soon, a military band from Denmark was playing the country's national anthem as the red and white Dannebrog was lowered down the flag pole and the Stars and Stripes immediately was hoisted in its place.
"No one made a sound. You could hear a pin drop," Sasso recalls. The mood of the crowd was both happy and sad. "We had mixed feelings. My family was sad because we lived all our lives as Danes, and now we were going to be the subjects of this rich nation. We knew what we had with the Danes, but we weren't sure what to expect from the new ties."
Four years later, Sasso and her sister, Grace Sparks, would play a highly significant role in the new territory's history.
The new territory's first flag
In 1921, Sasso's sister Grace had just married P.W. Sparks, a captain's yeoman aboard the USS Vixen commanded by William Russell White, who also was chief of staff for the territory's civilian governor, Rear Adm. Sumner E.W. Kittelle. One day during a staff meeting at Government House, Kittelle asked White to come up with some ideas for a flag. White immediately turned to Sparks because of his artistic ability.
Looking at the Great Seal of the United States, Sparks borrowed the majestic symbol of an eagle. He placed three arrows in the bird's left claw to symbolize the three Virgin Islands as well as Freedom, Happiness and Independence, and an olive branch in the right claw to represent peace.
The Vixen had no facilities for flag-making, so Sparks took his design home for his wife and Sasso to embroider. "It took us a long time," Sasso says. "It was a big flag." The story of the flag, including her name, were recorded in the Congressional Record of April 30, 1986.
Educating as a way of life
Sasso learned to embroider as a student at the Convent School, located in the buildings that now house the Department of Education offices across from what today is called Roosevelt Park. The school was run by the Belgian Order of La Sainte Union du Sacre Coeur de Jesus.
After her graduation, "I wanted to go into nursing," Sasso says. But it wasn't a prestigious profession, and her father persuaded her to go into teaching instead. This fateful career path would eventually lead Sasso to made her mark on generations of Virgin Islanders.
She began teaching in the St. Thomas and St. Croix public schools. This was in the days when children rode to school on donkeys, well-to-do families drove carriages, meals were cooked over coal pots and kerosene stoves, and iceboxes kept food fresh. In these days, too, single-band radios carried news of the world, ringing cowbells brought neighbors running, and steamer ships were the only means of traveling to the mainland — until famed aviator Charles Lindbergh touched down on what today is the golf course at the University of the Virgin Islands.
After a decade with the public school system, Sasso opened her own school, called The Miss Joseph Private School. "We didn't have grades. Rather, it was first class, second class and so on. Each child moved along based on how they were doing," Sasso explains. Arithmetic, spelling and English were core subjects, along with penmanship. "You sat and did your seat work until your penmanship was perfect," she remembers.
Parents played a big role at her school. "We depended on the parents to discipline children; it wasn't up to the teacher alone," she says.
By the late 1930s, Sasso decided to call a halt to her teaching career and marry Ernest D. Sasso, then treasurer of the Virgin Islands. They became the parents of a daughter, Leah.
It was the fall of 1950 that Father Mark Knoll of Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral asked Sasso to come out of retirement to teach elementary children at the Catholic School. "My husband didn't want me to go," Sasso remembers. "I had duties in the home, and now I was being asked out." Her compromise was to go back to teaching as a substitute.
"I said I would work until they could find some college-trained teachers. But year after year, they kept asking me to stay." Her substitute teaching spanned 17 years, until her husband died suddenly. "Grief overtook my patience, and then I knew it was time to go home," she says.
For today's parents, students and educators, Sasso says, "Respect, discipline and communication" are key. "It grieves me that much of this is lacking today," she says somberly.
Accolades from president and pope
Since her retirement, Sasso has been honored as "Teacher of the Year" on several occasions and has received recognition from the Catholic Daughters of America, the Catholic Diocese of the Virgin Islands, Sts. Peter and Paul School and Rotary II.
On her 90th birthday, she was presented with a plaque from the Legislature honoring her for almost five decades of service in the field of education, as well as for her role in creating the Virgin Islands flag. She also received congratulations from the White House and a personal written tribute from President and Mrs. George Bush.
On her 100th birthday, she was honored in a special mass at the Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral and received a blessing from Pope John Paul II. Of all her honors, Sasso says, the papal blessing is the most special to her. "He's our official spiritual leader, our shepherd," she says of the pope.
"I've had a very happy life," Sasso reflects. "We weren't rich, but we were blessed." A teacher still, to her own family and to her extended Virgin Islands family, she continues to impart her greatest lesson for new generations, the one inherent in her personal motto: "Life is an echo. What you send out is what comes back to you."

Sept. 14, 2001 – Beach cleaners needed. No special skills needed. Everyone can apply.
If you fit this description, you're welcome and wanted to sign up as a volunteer for Coast Weeks, the annual worldwide beach cleanup project sponsored by the Ocean Conservancy, formerly the Center for Marine Conservation.
Coast Weeks starts Saturday, with numerous beach cleanups already organized for that day, and continues through Oct. 6. Volunteers will be picking up used paper plates, cups, cigarette butts, diapers and other debris left on the territory's beaches.
"Most of our debris is land based," explained Marcia Taylor, marine adviser at the University of the Virgin Islands on St. Croix. Taylor and two St. Thomas colleagues, Lillian Moolenaar of the Planning and Natural Resources Department's Coastal Zone Management office, and Donna Griffin at the department's Fish and Wildlife Division, have organized cleanups throughout the territory during the three-week period.
All three marveled that some people don't just get it when it comes to keeping beaches clean. In one memorable event a few years ago, PNR staff and youth groups had worked for hours to get the Vessup Bay beach on the East End of St. Thomas into spic-and-span condition. At the end of the following weekend, the beach was once again so littered with party debris that it looked as if the crews had never been there.
"It's the adults," Griffin said, noting that educational programs are convincing children not to litter.
Moolenaar wondered what it would take to instill pride in Virgin Islands residents. She also called for enforcement of the territory's litter laws.
While most of the beach cleanups will take place on the territory's shores, several will occur underwater, where volunteer divers will pick up the flotsam and jetsam that washes off the beaches into the water or floats in from elsewhere.
According to Ocean Conservancy statistics, last year, 27 volunteers across the territory extracted 6,225 pounds of debris from the water. And 593 people scoured 12.3 miles of beaches, retrieving 5,705 pounds of litter — a total of nearly six tons of trash that should never have been put there in the first place.
While the refuse is visually offensive to humans, it can be fatal to marine life. For example, sea creatures can "get entangled in fishing line or eat it," Taylor said. The same is true of plastic bags and beverage six-pack plastic collars.
A part of the Coast Weeks process is keeping statistics on the garbage the volunteers pick up. The Ocean Conservancy supplies the forms, and beach cleaners themselves enter the data. Taylor said the information is utilized to track trends and help legislators craft laws to curb marine pollution.
For more information about the Coast Weeks/International Coastal Cleanup project, see the Ocean Conservancy web site.
If you want to volunteer on St. Croix, call Taylor at 692-4046. If you can help on St. Thomas or St. John, call Moolenaar at 774-3320 or Griffin at 775-6762.

Sept. 14, 2001 – Carrying votives, tapers and chunky candles borrowed from the dinner table, three dozen St. John residents gathered in Cruz Bay Park Friday at 7 p.m. to remember the thousands who died in Tuesday's terrorist attacks.
The gathering was similar to countless others held across the nation — prompted by an e-mail message that made its way back and forth across America and beyond on Thursday and Friday. Network television commentators noted that with no other publicity, this modern-day means of communication had reached thousands of people and moved them to light candles, individually or in groups, Friday evening.
"The candles are a symbol of light in a tunnel of darkness," Lisa Durgin said.
At the casual gathering, several participants spoke from their hearts about the week's events. "It is abominable that this evil reached our land," B.J. Harris said.
Andrew Yellon, who was 12 years old when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, said in his mind this attack was different from that one. He noted that other wars that involved the United States — he served in Korea — have been fought on foreign soil. While Hawaii was a U.S. territory when Japan attacked in 1941, it was still overseas. "This is a terrific shock," he said.
Bern Putnam said that two people from his Boston-area hometown died aboard one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center. "This is a solidarity thing," he said, later going around the circle of people gathered to give everyone a hug.
Putnam noted that many residents have turned out to be more nationalistic than they may have thought of themselves as being. Indeed, American flags were in evidence around Cruz Bay and public as well as private-sector locations. The fire station and police headquarters sported huge flags draped across their fronts, and Joe's Diner carried a fringe of small flags around its roof. A car parked in the Port Authority lot had a flag affixed to its side mirror.
Yellon played several musical selections and taps on his saxophone during the half-hour ceremony. At the close, the group gathered in singing "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Sept. 13, 2001 – If a bill now wending its way through the legislative process becomes law, water-tour operators accustomed to picking up tour takers at the cruise ship docks on St. Thomas and St. Croix will have to come up with other arrangements.
The Senate Planning and Environmental Protection Committee, chaired by Sen. Donald "Ducks" Cole, is scheduled to take up the measure at 10 a.m. Oct. 3 at the Legislature Building on St. Thomas.
The bill, sponsored by Sens. Celestino White and Norma Pickard-Samuel, would prohibit water-tour operators from meeting tourists at the West Indian Co. and Crown Bay docks on St. Thomas, the Ann Abramson Pier in Frederiksted and the Gallows Bay dock in Christiansted.
"It's to level the playing field," White said.
He said that taxi drivers aren't getting a fair share of the pie. They leave their houses at 2 a.m. to line up at the WICO dock in the hope of getting passengers, he said, but instead see many of those disembarking from the ships make a short walk to tour vessels tied up at the dock.
Eustace Grant, president of the V.I. Taxi Association, said taxi drivers fear that water tours will expand to include water taxis and this would further decrease the number of people who need vehicular taxi rides."We may be eased out of our livelihood," he said.
Grant suggested that taxi drivers transport water-tour participants to the Charlotte Amalie waterfront, where the tour operators would pick them up. White said water-tour operators would be allowed to tie up to the cruise ships in order to pick up passengers. He pointed out that the tour companies now pick up passengers off cruise ships anchored out in the Charlotte Amalie harbor in this way.
Tour operators see the bill as a threat to their industry and are angry about it.
Steve Garner, who owns ScubaWest in Frederiksted, pointed out that his tour boats are too small to carry out that kind of linkup with the huge cruise liners. Others similarly spoke of the logistical problems of picking up passengers directly from the ships.
"I hold the senators personally responsible for tourism in the Virgin Islands," St. Thomas tour operator Jimmy Loveland said.
Scott Short, manager of the Yacht Haven-based Underwater Safaris, picks up passengers at the WICO dock, by far the busiest of the territory's cruise ship docking facilities. "And we have all our equipment stored there," he said.
Short said that if his staff has to walk tour passengers around to the nearby Yacht Haven docks from the WICO dock, they will have to pass through construction debris, which is not desirable.
Garner said the effect of the bill would be to shut down his business. He said that in addition to cruise ship passengers, he often takes hotels guests on dive trips. There are no other docks in the area, so he must pick them up in his boat at the Ann Abramson Pier in Frederiksted, he said. It would be unsafe to ask people to swim out to the dive boat to board it for their excursion, he added.
Garner discounted taxi drivers' complaint that they don't get a fair share of cruise ship passenger revenues. He said the drivers already have a monopoly at the Frederiksted pier. "I've heard them tell people that there's no diving or snorkeling in Frederiksted — so they could get the fare to Christiansted," he said.
Short said that on a busy day, Underwater Safaris takes about 125 cruise ship passengers diving. He said that tour operators with larger vessels like the Kon Tiki barge, the Leyland Sneed motor vessel and the Island Girl and Wild Thing catamarans, as well as about 30 sailboats, now pick up passengers at the WICO dock.

Sept. 14, 2001 – Adj. Gen. Cleve McBean of the V.I. National Guard said Friday that none of the territory's military reservists would be mobilized immediately in response to the terrorist attacks this week in New York and Washington, D.C.
President George W. Bush has authorized Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to call as many as 50,000 National Guard and military reserve troops to active duty. U.S. military planners have assigned allotments for 35,500 of them — 13,000 from the Air Force, 10,000 from the Army, 7,500 from the Marines, 3,000 from the Navy and 2,000 from the Coast Guard.
The Virgin Islands has an Army National Guard program.
The Pentagon said the forces were being called up "to provide port operations, medical support, engineer support, general civil support and homeland defense."
The New York Times reported that about 9,000 members of the National Guard have been
called up from 31 jurisdictions, most of them from New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
While talk of going to war has spread across the nation, McBean said, reservists will not be activated right away. He said military leaders are compiling lists of reserve forces as a preliminary step. "It will take quite some time to develop" operational plans, he said Friday at a press conference at Government House on St. Thomas.
Although local National Guard personnel don't know whether or when they'll be called to duty, Delores Edwards, who works in the St. Croix recruiting office, said she is ready and willing. "We need to assist with the families" who have lost loved ones, she said.
Nationally, the tragedy has spurred increased enlistment in the military. Questions about Army recruiting locally were referred to U.S. Army spokesman Harvey Spigler in Miami, who said he had no specific information about the situation in the territory. However, he said that nearly all recruiting offices have had visits from people wanting to help their country. But he said many of them are over the age limit of 35 years, and that recruiters referred such people to volunteer organizations such as the American Red Cross.
Spigler said the recruiting process takes about three weeks to a month before a recruit goes on active duty. Men in the United States must register for Selective Service at their local post office or on the Internet when they turn 18. Currently the United States does not have a draft. "It would take a congressional act to change that," Spigler said.
Friday's Government House press conference, called by Gov. Charles W. Turnbull to address the territory's response to Tuesday's terrorist attacks on the U.S. mainland, came on the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance declared by President Bush.
At the press conference, Turnbull called for a moment of silence for the thousands of people who died as a result of Tuesday's terrorist attacks. One of them was Sgt. Maudlyn White, 38, a 15-year veteran of the Army who lived on St. Thomas and St. Croix when she was not on active duty. White was in the Pentagon when terrorists flew a hijacked jetliner into the complex.
The governor said it is too early to know how much of an impact the attacks will have on the territory's tourism industry. He noted receipt on Wednesday of a letter from Gov. Frank Savage of the British Virgin Islands expressing solidarity with the U.S. Virgin Islands and the United States. "The attack on America was not only an attack on America, but an attack on civilization," Turnbull said. He concluded the press conference by leading the singing of "God Bless America."

There is a hole inside every American today. A hole that may never be completely filled. A hole that if you had to put image to it must look like the hole in the skyline of New York City.
As Virgin Islanders we have felt this before, not to the degree and not to the magnitude of the horror our country faced this week.
But we know what it is like to awaken to a completely changed landscape. We know what is it like to not be able to stop crying over the sheer helplessness of seeing the devastation. We know the feeling that life may never be the same again. We know the pride in watching the people around us rise to the challenge of selflessly assisting one another.
We live in a community much like that of Washington and New York; a truly multi-cultural community, all races, creeds, colors and economic strata.
Many of us are originally from Washington or New York. Many of us, born here, have relocated to those cities. Many of us are torn apart because—not unlike those stuck helplessly on the mainland during our major hurricanes, unable to help, unable to mourn with family and friends—we are stuck here, unable to even send blood, food or aid.
To paraphrase our friend Leonard Pitts from a Miami Herald column that has been circulating on the Internet: we can also be petty and disagreeable. We experience our own prejudice and hatred, but we are basically loving, faithful people who live in relative harmony despite our incredible diversity.
After Hurricanes Hugo and Marilyn many of us displayed the symptoms of the walking wounded. Looking at the man or woman next to you, you didn't know what their personal experience might have been.
As we walk among each other we must remember we don't know what the next person has been through, is going through.
Much of it is anger. And when there is no face, no country, no person to direct that anger toward, the results can be devastating. It is also fear and suspicion for many. We need to diffuse that anger, fear and suspicion.
We have heard our national leaders call upon God to help us. God is among us, speaks through us and listens through us.
Everyone has a story to tell today, a story about what they feel. Listening to them will begin to fill the hole. It is the one thing we all can do to give aid.