The Maritime Prepositioning Ship Squadron Three staff, a group of 10 military personnel from the USNS 1ST Lt Jack Lummus\u2014the flagship of a squadron of 10 ships often seen anchored off the Saipan lagoon\u2014participated in last month\u2019s Beautify CNMI tree planting activity at the Koblerville Youth Center and Substation. <\/p>\n
U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Don Wilson, Community Relations Project Coordinator for the U.S. Navy command involved, said the group\u2019s interest in local community involvement was sparked in part after their participation in the 4th of July parade introduced them to the friendliness of the Saipan community. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe want the Saipan community to know that there are active duty military personnel on the island,\u201d Wilson explained in an e-mail to the Saipan Tribune. \u201cWhile most of the community is already aware of our ships anchored off the coast throughout the year, very few people in the community know much about the ships or their assigned personnel. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe MPSRON THREE Staff is always willing to share our stories with those we meet around the community. Our desire to make our presence known in the Saipan community is definitely what supplied the motivation that led us to volunteer in the efforts of Beautify CNMI,\u201d Wilson said.<\/p>\n
Because the staff were given short notice about the activity, only four staff members were able to participate. \u201cWe look forward to greater participation in the future,\u201d promised Wilson. <\/p>\n
The COMREL coordinator elaborated on the staff\u2019s desire to increase their presence in the community and said, \u201cWhile the desire to become more active in the Saipan community existed before the command\u2019s participation in the 4th of July parade, it did increase our desire to participate in other community functions and activities around the island.\u201d<\/p>\n
The squadron of ships that the MSPRON THREE staff serve can be seen off the Saipan coast 70-80 percent of the time. Five of the ships are usually anchored off Garapan, while the squadron constantly rotates the other five ships between Saipan, Guam, Korea and Japan. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile it is rare for the ships to be called away all our ships are required to be ready to sail with less than 12 hours of notification,\u201d Wilson said. All of the ships are known to leave in advance of extreme weather, but, Wilson noted, \u201csometimes the schedules all line up and we are all at sea at the same time for training.\u201d <\/p>\n
The MPSRON THREE staff visit Saipan daily when their work is complete, but because they are all currently serving a one to one-and-a-half year tour in a continuously forward deployed status, none of them live on Saipan.[B][I] (Caroline Lochabay)[\/I][\/B]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Maritime Prepositioning Ship Squadron Three staff, a group of 10 military personnel from the USNS 1ST Lt Jack Lummus\u2014the flagship of a squadron of 10 ships often seen anchored off the Saipan lagoon\u2014participated in last month\u2019s Beautify CNMI tree planting activity at the Koblerville Youth Center and Substation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}