The family of Army Sgt. Angel Sarah Rampersad had seen enough of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. So when the democratic socialist showed up at her funeral Friday with a prepared speech on his iPad, they made sure he stayed silent.
Rampersad, 28, grew up in Ozone Park. She enlisted, followed her uncle into the Army, and died July 17 when Iranian missiles slammed into Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. She was one of three American soldiers killed that day. Hundreds packed Calvary Assembly of God to honor her. Gospel songs filled the sanctuary. NYPD carried her flag-draped coffin to a hearse for the long ride to Long Island National Cemetery.
Gov. Kathy Hochul spoke. So did Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, state Sen. Joseph Addabbo Jr., and a local block association president. Mamdani sat in the fourth row near a Republican councilman. Names were called. His was not. Sources told the New York Post the mayor looked over at his staff, angry and frustrated, then put the tablet away.
“They kept calling names and then he was never called,” one attendee said.
The family is pro-Trump and conservative. They did not want the mayor’s politics turning a soldier’s farewell into a political sideshow. An insider put it plainly: they wanted to limit political distractions. Mamdani’s record made that easy.
He is an avowed democratic socialist who has harshly criticized Israel and labeled the U.S. campaign against Iran an “illegal war of aggression.” Back in February, when American and Israeli strikes began, he posted that the attacks marked “a catastrophic escalation,” complained about bombing cities, and insisted Americans only want “peace” and relief from the affordability crisis.
That is the man who expected to stand at the front of a church and eulogize a young woman killed by the regime he keeps defending in softer language. The family said no. Good for them.
City Hall ignored questions. Mamdani’s press team still released the speech he never got to deliver. It opened with the familiar line about the fallen giving their tomorrows for our today. Fine words. Empty coming from a mayor who treats the war that claimed those tomorrows as illegitimate.
Republican Councilman Frank Morano, no ally of the mayor, admitted he was surprised. “I didn’t understand why they would have lower-level officials speak and not the mayor.”
The answer sits in the family’s choice. Lower-level officials did not call the fight against Iran illegal. They did not spend years attacking the Jewish state while a Queens soldier fought under the American flag.
Rampersad’s story is straightforward. She graduated from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She served in Hawaii and Germany before deployment. Neighbors remembered a young woman who could talk to people above her rank and still be heard.
Daisy Davis-Credle of the Queens Sunday School Association put it simply: “It’s not what you do, it’s how you do what you do. And she knew how to do that.”
Hochul said she felt like Rampersad could have been one of her daughters. That is the right instinct. A mayor who treats the war that killed her as aggression does not get to claim the same moral ground.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. That is John 15:13. Sgt. Rampersad laid hers down. The family who raised her decided who would speak over her casket. They chose not to hand the microphone to a man whose politics reject the very fight that took her.
New York has a mayor who will ride a double-decker bus for a housing stunt and push city-run grocery stores with 30 percent discounts. He will release prepared remarks after the fact. What he will not do is force his way into a family’s grief when that family sees him clearly.
The snub was not rude. It was clarity. A conservative Queens family looked at the socialist mayor of their city and decided their daughter’s memory deserved better. They were right.
