SANTA RITA, Guam — Lt. John “Jack” P. Stone relieved Lt. Raymond J. Cerrato III as commanding officer of the Coast Guard Cutter Oliver Henry during a change of command ceremony in Apra Harbor on August 21, closing a three-year command that logged more than 75,000 nautical miles across Oceania and the Micronesian subregion.
Cmdr. Grant Johnson, chief of response for U.S. Coast Guard Forces Micronesia/Sector Guam, presided over the ceremony.
Under Cerrato, a Melbourne, Florida native, the Oliver Henry and its crew rescued 28 people in multiple multi-agency responses, and responded to Super Typhoons Mawar and Sinlaku, facilitating the reopening of critical ports in Rota and Tinian. The cutter delivered more than 45,000 pounds of relief supplies to remote Pacific communities in support of Operation Rematau and in response to Typhoons Mawar, Sinlaku and Bavi.
The crew also conducted more than 30 Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission boardings, executed bilateral shiprider agreements with Palau, the FSM, the Marshall Islands and Kiribati to combat transnational criminal activity, including the first U.S.-Kiribati shiprider patrol in eight years, and made historic port calls: the first U.S. ship visit to Nauru and the first Coast Guard Fast Response Cutter visits to Tarawa and Rota.
Stone, an Atlanta native commissioned from the Coast Guard Academy in 2022, previously served aboard the cutter Mohawk and spent two years as navigator aboard the Navy destroyer USS Bainbridge.
The Oliver Henry, homeported in Guam since September 2022, is one of four Fast Response Cutters based there. It is named for Oliver T. Henry Jr., who served from 1940 to 1966 and broke the service’s color barrier as the first African American to transfer from the mess steward rating, then an all-Black rating, to another rating, motor machinist.
