Sparks will assume his new position as Coast Guard liaison officer to the Pacific Command and he will be replaced by Capt. Casey White.
“I am going reluctantly and only after I’ve asked to stay for another year but that wasn’t in the cards,” Sparks told Variety on Monday at a gathering held in his honor at the Saipan Seaport.
It has been a rewarding, challenging three years, he said.
He added, “I don’t think I have been anywhere more gracious, more hospitable than Saipan and Guam.”
Sparks told reporters that three years is the regular tour length and occasionally Guardsmen are allowed to do another year. “But not in my position.”
He explained there are more people qualified for his position than there are “this type of position.”
As he moves to Honolulu to assume what he describes as “a pretty big job,” Sparks said,”I will be on loan to the Department of Defense — a go-between Adm. Robert F. Willard of the Pacific Command and the Coast Guard.
Asked if the move was a promotion, Sparks said it wasn’t.
He said he had met and worked with White a few days and he found her “really sharp and fully qualified” to take on the job.
He said White goes to Honolulu — Sector 14— for more briefings and returns to Guam for the official change of command ceremony next week.
“I have a lot of confidence in her,” he said.
For his successor, Sparks said, “Well we have a saying in the Coast Guard, you can’t fix everything. But you can leave it better than you found it. I hope she takes that to heart and I know she will.”
In his three years in the region, Sparks said the Coast Guard Sector Guam needs more people, more assets, more infrastructure and more money in their budget.
“There is an increasing demand for our services in this part of the world and it’s only going to grow,” said Sparks.
Sparks also added that he believes the region is a growth area for the Coast Guard.
“It’s an area that needs more attention,” he said.
Sparks — who will officially hand over helm of the Guam sector to White next week in a change of command ceremony — first assumed command of U.S. Coast Guard Sector Guam on July 18, 2008.
In discharging his duties as commander of Guam Sector, Sparks also served as captain of the port, federal maritime security coordinator, officer in charge of marine inspection, and federal on-scene coordinator for Guam and the Northern Marianas.
He was also responsible as Search and Rescue Mission Coordinator for nearly 2 million square nautical miles of Western Pacific Ocean.
Under Sparks’ command was a staff of 159 active duty and civilian personnel with assets that include 110-foot patrol boats USCGC Assateague and USCGC Washington, stationed in Apra Harbor, three 25-foot response boats.
Prior to becoming sector commander on Guam, Sparks —who served in a manifold of assignments in his career — was commanding officer of Marine Safety Unit Port Arthur in charge of the nation’s highest concentration of LNG facilities and oil refineries and the busiest commercial Military Outload port in the U.S.
Sparks, who holds a J.D. degree from the University of Virginia School of Law and a B.S. degree from Virginia Tech, also served as Coast Guard advisor at Naval War College, serving in the International Law Department of the Center for Naval Warfare Studies.
He also spent several years as a special assistant United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
