130 Years of Family Serving Family: Clifton Keen, Fort Rucker

One in a series honoring the Exchange’s 130 years of family serving family

Who he is: Clifton Keen, Triangle Express shift manager, Fort Rucker

Years at the Exchange: 20 years

Military connections: A retired first sergeant, Keen served 26½ years in the Army—his first two years as an infantryman in Vietnam, followed by 24 years as a military police officer.

What brought him to the Exchange: After retiring in 1992 from the Army, Keen worked for 12 years as a network specialist at the Fort Stewart Youth Challenge Academy. During this time, he regularly visited his wife, Yong, who worked at the Fort Rucker Exchange. He credits his wife with encouraging him to apply after retiring from the Army, jokingly saying, “She was more important than me.”

He recalls the transition from the Army to the Exchange as “pretty easy,” adding, “This was the best place to look for work—I found what I was looking for.”

Keen was hired as a courier/market price coordinator, appreciating the chance to remain part of the military community and be on post even after retirement.

Exchange in Afghanistan: Keen worked at three Exchange locations—Fort Rucker, Camp Stone in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Camp Leatherneck in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Keen spent 21 months in Afghanistan. He recalls the lack of shelving and merchandise stacked on top of each other. “Things were a little bit of everywhere.”

He chose to deploy to Afghanistan to be closer to his wife, who had deployed two months earlier. However, his plan didn’t work out as he had hoped. His wife was stationed on the far east side of the country, while he was on the far west side, so they only saw each other once, during R&R.

After leaving Kandahar, Keen stopped by the Fort Rucker Exchange to wrap things up before accepting a job as a stocking manager at Schofield Barracks Exchange in Hawaii. He stayed in Hawaii for a year before resigning to care for his wife while she was ill. Once Yong recovered, Keen returned to the Fort Rucker Exchange as a rehire.

Exchange career and military background parallels: Keen emphasized that his experience as a Soldier directly translates to his role as an associate because the Exchange offers a similar sense of structure. “Everybody has a place and something to do or otherwise, we’ll fall apart,” he said. “Everybody’s got a mission.”

Keen appreciates the camaraderie in both the Army and the Exchange. “You meet people that you’re going to know the rest of your life,” he said. He even mentioned he keeps in touch with his very first Exchange manager.

What Family Serving Family means to him: While Keen’s wife and son are also former Exchange associates, he believes Family Serving Family includes something more: “We take care of our people, we provide the service they need and at a reasonable price. We go out of our way to make sure Soldiers, Airmen and Guardians have what they need.”