Legislation to rename the Sakonnet River Bridge after a U.S. Army soldier from Tiverton killed in action in Iraq in 2004 has cleared the Rhode Island General Assembly.
The “Staff Sergeant Christopher Potts Sakonnet River Bridge” would be the new name of the span connecting Tiverton and Portsmouth via Route 24 under the bill that passed the House on April 10 and the Senate version that passed in concurrence on May 1. Both chambers approved the legislation unanimously.
The bill now heads to the desk of Gov. Dan McKee, who plans to sign the legislation, according to his spokesperson Olivia DaRocha.
“Over the course of his life, RI National Guard Staff Sergeant Christopher Potts called Aquidneck Island and Tiverton home, so it is a fitting tribute that the bridge between these two communities be named in his honor,” McKee said Monday. “Rhode Island and America will always be indebted to him for his service and his sacrifice.”
Rep. Samuel Azzinaro, a Westerly Democrat and chair of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, said in a statement Thursday: “To rename this major Rhode Island bridge in his honor is a worthy tribute to a true Rhode Island hero who gave his life so that we all may live in a world free of tyranny and persecution.”
“And now, hopefully whenever someone drives over this bridge, they will be compelled to look up who Staff Sergeant Potts was and discover how his legacy will live on in the state that he loved so much,” Azzinaro, a retired National Guardsman and former member of the Army Reserve, added.
Potts served in the Rhode Island National Guard for over 14 years. He deployed to Iraq in March 2004 and was killed in Taji, Iraq, on Oct. 3, 2004, his 38th birthday. Potts’ fellow servicemembers who testified on the bill during a February committee hearing said that Potts had found a stockpile of weapons with ammo, guns, rockets, mortars, artillery rounds and more, shortly before he and a medic were executed by insurgent groups.
“We think that by him finding this cache — it was the largest cache in Iraq at the time — it put a damper on the insurgents’ operations against us and saved a lot of lives,” Command Sgt. Maj. Raymond Viens, who served alongside Potts, said during the Feb. 6 Special Legislation committee hearing where Azzinaro’s bill was first heard.
Potts posthumously received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V” and the Purple Heart.
Sen. Walter Felag, a Warren Democrat, sponsored the legislation in his chamber. Like Azzinaro, Felag chairs the veterans’ affairs committee in his chamber.
“Renaming the Sakonnet Bridge in his honor will serve as a fitting reminder of what our service members sacrifice in order to protect the ideals and freedoms that we deeply cherish,” Felag said in a statement Thursday.
The bill underwent one minor revision since being introduced by Azzinaro on the House floor in January. The original version of the bill suggested naming the structure the “Staff Sergeant Christopher Potts Sakonnet Bridge,” and the successful legislation simply retains the “River” in the current name.
This story was originally published by the Rhode Island Current.
