#FlashbackFriday: A Pictorial Look Back at 9/11 and Exchange Support for Troops and First Responders
Sunday will mark the 21st anniversary of 9/11, a day that affected all Americans and that some Exchange associates experienced firsthand. The Exchange also provided support to troops working on rescue and cleanup efforts at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (shown above). Below are some photos from the aftermath of 9/11.
Steve Williams (in red shirt), then-manager of Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton Exchange, helps sort out boxes of products for some of the thousands of first responders to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. In a 2021 interview, Williams told the Exchange Post that before the attacks, Sept. 11 was “the clearest day I remember from New York City.” He had just started a meeting to discuss a store renovation when his assistant told him that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. The next day, Williams, Area Manager Ray Black and then-West Point General Manager Allan Heasty started preparing for the arrival of a mobile field Exchange, which was in Battery Park at the southern end of Manhattan by Sept. 13 to support National Guard troops.
From left, Bryan DeMoss, an Eastern Region area manager at the time; Alan Burton, former president of the American Logistics Association; and Bob Ellis, who headed the Exchange’s Washington office, stand outside a mobile field Exchange that Ellis and others staffed around the clock at the Pentagon to support about 2,000 first responders. Ellis said the ALA made possible many donations of products to the Pentagon effort. Both Ellis and DeMoss have since retired from the Exchange. Ellis had been at the Pentagon the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and left seven minutes before American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the building, hitting the room that he bad been in.
An associate from Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton Exchange serves troops from the back of a truck in Battery Park.
A military police officer shops at a mobile field exchange on the grounds of the Pentagon. The burned hull of the Pentagon is visible out the rear door of the MFE.
First responders shop for snacks at a mobile field exchange set up at the World Trade Center. Drivers from the Dan Daniel Distribution Center in Newport News, Va., made daily trips to New York City and to the Pentagon to supply merchandise.
An associate from Andrews AFB, Md., watches as a service member gets an American flag inside a mobile field Exchange set up at the Pentagon. The MFE served more than 2,000 first responders and remained running for two months.
Beth Goodman-Bluhm, left, Bob Ellis (in white sweatshirt) and associates from the Washington area share a laugh with a state police officer outside the mobile field Exchange at the Pentagon. Goodman-Bluhm, then manager at Andrews AFB, Md., helped set up the MFE, which associates staffed around the clock. She is now East Central Region Vice President.
Beyond New York and Washington, Exchanges held bake sales and other fund-raisers to raise money for a Red Cross emergency relief fund and for victims of the attacks. As military personnel across the country were called on in all kinds of weather to ensure the safety of military installations, associates delivered meals and doughnuts to weary troops. Schofield Barracks in Hawaii conducted Operation Aloha Lei, constructing a memorial lei more than 200 yards long with messages honoring victims.
In February 2002, after New York City ran out of U.S. flags, the Exchange provided 600 flags to the city for funerals and burials of first responders who died in the attacks.
