MIAMI – The Coast Guard Cutter Richard Etheridge will welcome its new Commanding Officer during a change-of-command ceremony at Base Miami Beach, Fla., at 10 a.m., Friday.
During the ceremony, Lt. Staci K. Brown will relieve Cmdr. Christian A. Lee, whose next assignment will be as the appropriations budget coordinator, Office of Budget and Programs in the District of Columbia.
Brown’s previous assignment was as the commanding officer of the Coast Guard Cutter Aquidneck, Patrol Forces Southwest Asia, Manama, and Bahrain. Cutter Aquidneck deployed throughout the Arabian Gulf in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Brown is a native of Virginia Beach, Va., and graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in 2003. Brown holds a Bachelor’s degree in government.
The military change-of-command is a time honored naval tradition which signifies the transfer of total responsibility, authority and accountability from one individual to another.
The 154-foot Richard Etheridge is a Fast Response Cutter capable of speeds of 28-plus knots that deploys independently to conduct missions such as drug and illegal migrant law enforcement, search and rescue, ports, waterways, and coastal security, fishery enforcement, and national defense operations along the Gulf of Mexico and throughout the Caribbean.
The Cutter Richard Etheridge was commissioned in August 2012 and is named after Coast Guard hero Richard Etheridge, the first African-American to command a life-saving station. Etheridge led the Pea Island Lifesaving Station crew of six in a daring rescue operation that saved the entire crew of the schooner E.S. Newman, which had become grounded in a treacherous storm in 1896.
To find out more about the Coast Guard’s Fast Response Cutter program, visit: http://www.uscg.mil/acquisition/sentinel/default.asp.
