In the journalist tradition, the Source offers a look back at the biggest stories of the past year, as determined by readers and by staff.
Part one of this four-part series covered the months of January, February, and March 2023.
Following is a continued chronological summary of some of the year’s news highlights:
April
The University of the Virgin Islands opens a “Creativity Lab” for the St. Thomas campus in the former West Bay Supermarket, which closed in 2019.
A renovated Vendors Plaza opens in Charlotte Amalie.
The community mourns the loss of King Styler, aka Samuel Ryan. He won his first calypso crown in Antigua at the age of 19, was a one-time member of the St. Thomas group Milo and the Kings, and earned decades of accolades, first in calypso and then in gospel music.
The Bryan administration holds a groundbreaking for the renovation of the Clinton-Phipps Racetrack on faith that funding will be approved. Both the St. Thomas racetrack and the Randall “Doc” James Racetrack on St. Croix were damaged in the 2017 hurricanes and had been awaiting renovation ever since.
Following her outstanding career at the University of South Carolina, power forward and defense star Virgin Islander Aliyah Boston is the number one pick in the WNBA draft and heads to Indiana Fever.
As an otherwise joyful St. Thomas Carnival wraps up, it is marred by violence. While sweeping up debris at the end of the Adult Parade, Alrick Thomas is killed when a man shoots into the crowded streets. In a separate incident near Carnival Village that night, a man is seriously injured in a stabbing.
NOAA formally considers listing queen conch as a threatened species; local authorities and fishers oppose the idea.
Marine scientists discover the cause of a widespread die-off of the black Long Spine Sea Urchin in the Caribbean is a seaborne, tiny single-celled parasite, and they begin to research how to resist it.
In a close vote, the WAPA governing board approves paying $150 million (in addition to millions already paid) to settle its debt and terminate its agreement with Vitol. Under the 2012 agreement, eight generating units were to be converted to propane, cutting WAPA operating costs by 30 percent, but only three units worked with propane, and the savings never materialized.
Judith Grybowski, community activist and founding member of the College of Nursing at what was then the College of the Virgin Islands, dies at age 85.
After a court-ordered deadline passes, court records reveal that hundreds of thousands of people have responded as potential claimants for compensation for asbestos exposure at the Hess Oil facility on St. Croix. The action was required as Honx, a Hess subsidiary, filed for bankruptcy protection.
May
The territory mourns the loss of Judge Eileen Petersen, who died at the end of April. The St. Croix native was appointed to the Municipal Court (later Territorial Court and now Superior Court) in 1971 – the first female jurist in the territory. After she left the bench, she became the first chairwoman of the newly created V.I. Casino Control Commission.
Jeff Miller swims 16.2 miles down the Sir Francis Drake Channel, from Virgin Gorda to St. John, in a little over nine hours and 18 minutes. The feat was to raise money for the St. John Cancer Fund and for Team River Runner, an organization for wounded veterans.
Buoy Haus, a 94-room boutique hotel on Morningstar Beach, has its soft opening. Along with its sister property, Frenchman’s Reef Resort, it was badly damaged by the 2017 hurricanes and underwent a six-year, multimillion make-over and name change.
CORE (the Caribbean Oceanic Restoration and Educational Foundation) establishes a coral nursery in Leinster Bay.
Denise George receives an award from the National Sexual Response Center. The former V.I. attorney general was honored for her work to prevent and respond to sexual violence. The V.I. Domestic Violence and Sexual Council nominated her for the national award.
A fixture in Virgin Islands media and public life for 60 years, Lee Carle (born Leo Antonio Carlo) dies at the age of 92 and was remembered fondly by residents across the social spectrum. A native of New York, Carle moved to the territory in 1954 after a brief stint in the Navy. A professional emcee and entertainment promotor, he was best known for his news reports on WSTA radio.
Without explanation, Bosede Bruce resigns from her position as Finance commissioner; she had held the job since 2021.
The private residence at the top of Synagogue Hill once known as “Smith’s Fancy,” is reincarnated into a 28-room guest house named the Pink Palm Hotel.
JPMorgan Chase files a memorandum in its defense against the lawsuit brought against it at the end of December, effectively claiming the Virgin Islands does not have clean hands in the matter of Jeffrey Epstein and his sex trafficking operations. In a series of filings over the ensuing months, the bank alleges that many current and former V.I. government officials and influencers knowingly allowed the millionaire convicted sex offender to operate with impunity. Among the bank’s targets were former Govs. John de Jongh and Kenneth Mapp, former First Lady Cecile de Jongh, sitting Gov. Albert Bryan Jr., Delegate to Congress Stacey Plaskett, former Sens. Celestino White and Carlton Dowe and former Attorney General Vincent Frazer.
Billionaire Stephen Deckoff buys Little St. James and Great St. James islands from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein for a reported $60 million. As part of the settlement of the V.I. government’s suit against the estate, the government is to receive half of that money. Founder of a private equity firm, Black Diamond Capital Management, and owner of SD Investments LLC, Deckoff moved to the territory in 2011 and lives on St. John. He announced he plans to build a luxury resort on the property.
Although the COVID epidemic has been winding down, the V.I. Health Department announces the 131st death from the disease in the territory and warns there is a slight uptick in the number of active cases.
Meeting in executive session, the Government Employees Retirement System board finally agrees on a replacement of Austin Nibbs as GERS administrator, a post he held since 2007 and from which he had been trying to retire since 2021, but the board doesn’t announce his successor until . . .
June
The GERS governing board announces that Angel Dawson will take over as administrator of the system in July. A longtime banker, most recently working as senior vice president with FirstBank Puerto Rico, Dawson has also served in the public sector, most notably as the V.I. Finance commissioner from 2009 to 2014.
The worldwide public health emergency because of COVID-19 officially ends, but Health officials remind the public that it does not mean the disease has disappeared.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony marks the end of a major restoration of the St. John Library, sponsored largely by disaster funds, but the facility remained closed due to a lack of staff. The last full-time librarian resigned in 2016. It limped along with volunteers and part-time staff for a while but it closed in August 2019.
Former Senate president and longtime Labor leader Hugo Dennis dies at 86. He is remembered especially for his early years as an athlete and for helping to found the American Federation of Teachers in the Virgin Islands.
A retail consulting firm known as SB360 announces that the Kmart store at Sunshine Mall in Frederiksted will soon close.
