Feb. 27, 2008 — Virgin Islanders honored two U.S. senators as friends of the territory at a V.I. Day celebration in the District of Columbia Tuesday, with Gov. John deJongh Jr. presenting Alexander Hamilton Awards to Orrin Hatch and Jay Rockefeller.
Hatch, in turn, pledged to honor the award's namesake, a founding father who spent his formative years on St. Croix before moving to the mainland, serving as George Washington's aide de camp in the American Revolution, playing an instrumental role in writing the U.S. Constitution and serving as the country's first secretary of the treasury.
"We have done almost nothing for Alexander Hamilton, and there is so much there that could be done," Hatch told the crowd in a ballroom at the JW Marriott Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, just down the street from the White House in Washington. The Utah Republican pledged to work toward preserving the sites on St. Croix where Hamilton lived and worked, and where his mother was buried.
While introducing Hatch, deJongh talked about his first trip to Washington as governor of the Virgin Islands, when he met with several congressional leaders. Dejongh said he studied Hatch's background and learned about the issues important to the senator, but didn't think to bone up on his history.
"He proceeded to talk about Alexander Hamilton for a half an hour," deJongh said.
Guests at the celebration received a bag of gifts promoting tourism and the territory's history, including the book Alexander Hamilton, American by columnist and author Richard Brookhiser. A visit to the grave of Hamilton's mother was a "spiritual experience," Brookhiser told the crowd.
Hamilton "never lost sight of an economy that could grow not with slavery, but with hard work and opportunity," he said. Hamilton was shaped by his experience with the especially harsh reality of Caribbean slavery. The average life span of an enslaved person brought to the territory from Africa was only seven years, Brookhiser said. That helped teach Hamilton that the institution was incompatible with American ideals of freedom.
"Some people look at this and realize this is wrong, and this is monstrous, and Alexander Hamilton was one of them," Brookhiser told the crowd.
The author is working with two documentary filmmakers, Michael and Gina Pack of Maryland, on a Hamilton documentary planned for broadcast on PBS in 2009. They collaborated with Brookhiser on an early documentary about another founding father, "George Washington Rediscovered," in 2002, and were also guests at Tuesday's celebration.
Brookhiser offered historical perspective on the lessons Hamilton learned about international finance as a shipping clerk in the West Indies in the mid 1700s. Sugar was a product of tremendous economic significance.
"In the 18th century world, sugar was oil," Brookhiser said.
Rockefeller compared the contemporary world of the Virgin Islands with his adopted home state, West Virginia, where he worked as a VISTA volunteer as a young man before eventually becoming governor and then senator.
"We're both isolated," Rockefeller said. "People poke fun at us. They think we walk around in bare feet."
His family donated the land on St. John that became Virgin Islands National Park, and Rockefeller professed a lifelong love of the territory.
"I'm very, very, very proud of my family's relationship to the Virgin Islands," he said. "I proposed to my wife there!"
Other speakers at Tuesday's celebration included Delegate Donna M. Christensen and Laverne Ragster of the University of the Virgin Islands, both of whom served on the committee appointed by the governor that selected the award winners. Guests at V.I. Day also included Sen. Juan Figueroa-Serville, National Park Superintendent Joel Tutein from St. Croix and Jim Cannavino of Hovensa, all singled out by deJongh during his remarks.
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