New York ordered flags on all state government buildings to fly at half-staff on July 31 in honor of Staff Sergeant Angel S. Rampersad, a Queens native who died overseas earlier this month. Governor Kathy Hochul said the flag order would run from sunrise to sunset.
The day of remembrance put Rampersad at the center of a state tribute that is both public and personal. She grew up in Ozone Park, graduated from Forest Hills High School and later earned a criminal justice degree from John Jay College before serving with the 1st Battalion, 57th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, part of the 52nd Air Defense Artillery Brigade based in Germany. She received the Army Commendation Medal and the Army Achievement Medal, and was posthumously promoted to Staff Sergeant.
Rampersad died on July 17 during an attack at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. The Department of Defense said she was among U.S. personnel killed in the enemy attack, but the cause of the attack remains under investigation. That unresolved detail hangs over the state’s tribute: officials are honoring her service while the circumstances that killed her are still not fully explained.
Hochul said her heart was with Rampersad’s family, loved ones and the soldiers who stood beside her, and called her life one of courage and selflessness. She also said New York is safer because of Americans like Rampersad who answer the call to serve. The order came alongside a similar remembrance in Colorado for Nathan Matthews, a U.S. Wildland Fire Service firefighter who died from injuries suffered in a June 27 burnover event while responding to the Knowles fire in Mesa County.
Matthews died on July 24, three days before Colorado lowered flags in his honor. He had been injured during the burnover event that killed Emily Barker, Nick Hutcherson and Sydney Watson, and the Knowles fire later merged into what became known as the Snyder fire. A memorial procession for Matthews moved Friday morning from the Denver Federal Center to Grand Junction along U.S. 6 and Interstate 70. Together, the two flag orders mark a brief but sobering stretch of remembrance for people killed in service, one overseas and one at home, with the full story of Rampersad’s death still waiting on the outcome of the investigation.
