QUEENS, N.Y. – Carol Acevedo stood before the congregation at Calvary Assembly of God church in Ozone Park on Friday morning and told the people in the pews to hold their children close. “Love your kids, hug them,” she said. “I don’t have mine to hug anymore.” Her daughter, Staff Sgt. Angel Sarah Rampersad, was laid to rest that morning inside a flag-draped military casket.
Rampersad, 28, died on July 17 when Iranian forces launched a missile strike on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, where she was stationed. She was one of three American service members killed in the attack. Sitting in the church as her family buried her was Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City. His name was never called to speak.
Mamdani, who took office in January and has made his skepticism of US military intervention abroad central to his political identity, arrived at the service with prepared remarks. Queens Borough President Donovan Richards spoke. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, delivered remarks. The mayor was observed reviewing his statement on an iPad throughout the service. The family had decided, according to NPR, to exclude him from speaking in an effort to avoid “political distractions.”
His office released the statement after the service concluded. “It is often said that our fallen gave their tomorrows for our today,” the mayor had written. “Sergeant Rampersad had tomorrows waiting for her: birthdays, ordinary mornings, evenings spent with her loved ones. But she gave every one of them up so that we could have ours.” It was a sentence about grief. It was also the sentence the family had decided not to let him say out loud, in a church, in front of her mother.
Rampersad grew up in Ozone Park, a working-class neighborhood in southwest Queens where Caribbean immigrant families have settled across generations. Her aunt, Judy Rackal, described her as always calm. “In the face of every crisis that her family encountered,” Rackal told the congregation, “she would be the calming element.” She had wanted to join the Army as a teenager but could not sign enlistment papers without her mother’s permission. She waited, made an appointment with a recruiter a few days after turning 21, and signed on her own.
Richards, the Queens borough president, framed her service in terms that carried particular weight given her background. “Angel Rampersad was not born in the United States of America,” he said, “but Angel Rampersad was willing to die for the United States of America.” She did not have the birthright Americans often take for granted. She had the choice, and she made it at 21, alone.
Muwaffaq Salti Air Base is a Jordanian facility used by American forces under a bilateral defense agreement. It became one of the more active targets as the Iran-US conflict escalated, with strikes and counterstrikes accumulating across Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the Strait of Hormuz through July. The July 17 attack killed two other service members alongside Rampersad: 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Hawaii, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Texas.
Mamdani’s political record on foreign policy is public and consistent. Earlier this month, he called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal and demanded federal enforcement of his outstanding ICC arrest warrant when Netanyahu announced a September visit to New York for the UN General Assembly. His positions on American military conduct abroad have not changed since taking office. Whether those specific views shaped the Rampersad family’s decision was not stated. The reported rationale was avoiding “political distractions,” leaving the precise nature of the distraction unspecified.
The Iran-US conflict has generated a recurring question in American political life: what is appropriate speech from officials at funerals for service members killed in its course. Three soldiers from three different states died at Muwaffaq Salti on July 17. Each funeral carries some version of the question of which officials are welcome, and what they are permitted to say when they arrive.
At Calvary Assembly of God on Friday, the answer was straightforward. Carol Acevedo spoke. Donovan Richards spoke. Kathy Hochul spoke. Zohran Mamdani sat in a pew and read nothing. Fox News reported his exclusion from the speaking program, citing the New York Post’s account of the family’s deliberate choice.
What that choice reflects about the distance between New York City’s political leadership and the families of service members lost in the Iran war is not yet clear. The Rampersad family offered no extended explanation. What is documented is that Carol Acevedo stood at a pulpit in Queens and told a congregation to hold their children while they still could. Her daughter had wanted to serve since she was old enough to want anything. She got there at 21, and she went as far as it was possible to go.
