SFD SVP Darryl Porter Looks Back on His 36-Year Exchange Journey

Darryl Porter did not grow up in a military family, but he did have a neighbor named Deon who was in the Army, which was how Porter first learned about the Exchange.

“I looked up to him when I was a kid,” said Porter, senior vice president of Services & Food. “He would come back from Korea and talk about the PX—how he got his CDs and his boombox and sneakers from the PX and how it had these great prices. I asked him, ‘What’s the PX?’ ‘It’s the post exchange—it’s a store but it’s just for Soldiers.’”

Porter said that he was probably 14 or 15 at the time. A few years later, when he was attending the University of Arkansas, the Exchange had a table at a job fair.

“It connected,” Porter said. “When I saw the table, I said, ‘OK, that’s what Deon was talking about.’ There was a poster there that talked about retail opportunities around the world.”

He decided to apply, and was hired in February 1989. That turned into a 36-year career that will end with his retirement at the end of July.

Go west, young man

Porter began his Exchange career at Fort Hood, Texas, as a college trainee at the Management Training Center. He completed his on-the-job training at Little Rock Air Force Base before being assigned to Fort Bliss, where he became sales area manager in late 1989.

Going to west Texas, with its mountains and desert, was a big switch for the southwest Arkansas native.

“I’d never been west in my life,” he said. “My family didn’t really travel. And at the time, there was a lot going on at Bliss. Even to this day, Fort Bliss has been a huge part of my career.”

Porter remained at Bliss until late 1992, working in sales area manager and assistant retail manager positions. The timing coincided with Operation Desert Storm/Shield in 1990 and early ’91, and Porter was at an installation where many Soldiers trained for those operations to get used to desert conditions.

“I was in my early 20s, and I befriended a lot of Soldiers who were my age,” Porter said. “I would hang out with some of them on the weekends. I got married young, and the guys I really hung out with were also married, so I’d hang out in the housing area with these guys. I had friends who were getting ready to go and would tell us to look after their wives.”

Although he says it’s a beautiful city now, in 1989, Porter was not a big fan of El Paso, where Fort Bliss is located. “Leaving Arkansas, going to El Paso, being a newlywed, it was not easy,” he said. “The smog at the time was bad. I was frantically trying to find something different.”

Making it in Meade

In December 1992, he got a change of scenery when he moved to serve as the PX stockroom manager at Fort Meade, Maryland, about 30 miles northeast of Washington, D.C.

“That was one of my favorite jobs,” he said. “I liked driving a forklift, loading trucks and wearing steel-toed boots. I felt at home. I guess because I worked so hard, it’s really where my career took off.”

Porter, who grew up in Mineral Springs, Arkansas—a city of fewer than 1,500 people—had to adapt to the more populous area, but he had a head start.

“I’d already experienced that by going to the University of Arkansas,” he said. “I’d gone from a town where there were 42 kids in my high school class to a major university, so I’d already been a fish out of water. It was hard to get acclimated to so many people in one room—there could be more people in one room than there were in my hometown.”

It was in Maryland where he decided to commit to a career with the Exchange. He’d received a job offer that would have doubled his salary. He declined the offer  after talking to his father.

“He said, ‘Son, don’t leave your government job for a private-sector job; as soon as something goes down, they’re going to let you go. Don’t do that.’ So I didn’t. I wasn’t unhappy with AAFES at the time, and I liked the people I was working with.”

At Meade, he and his wife bought their first home, when he was 25 years old. “It was a townhouse,” he said. “We bought it because we had a boxer and we couldn’t find anyone who would rent to us.”

They weren’t in the house very long before Porter received another assignment, this time on an island.

Island in the sun (and storms)

In September 1994, Porter PCS’d to Puerto Rico, where he became operations manager at the Fort Buchanan Exchange. He worked in Puerto Rico until 1996. During the time he was there, 11 hurricanes and tropical storms hit the island.

“The big one was Hurricane Luis, which came through in ’95,” he said. “That was something. I probably still have a recording of it on a VHS tape somewhere. It was crazy. You couldn’t get off the island because the airports were closed, so there was nowhere to go. You just hunkered down.

“It took us years to get rid of all the batteries my wife had bought to keep us prepared,” he added, “because sometimes we’d be without power for a week.”

But Porter loved Puerto Rico. The people there reminded him of people from his hometown. He felt at home and he loved his job.

“The store manager was Matt Mennona and the sales & merchandise manager was Edil Quinones,” Porter said. “We would carpool together. I moved on post for a while—that was the only time I’d ever lived on post—and you’d see customers living across the street. I really enjoyed that assignment. The only thing that was difficult was being so far away from home.”

The next move, in 1996, brought him closer to home.

Back to Texas

In October 1996, Porter became sales and merchandise manager at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth Exchange, roughly 40 miles from Exchange headquarters in Dallas.

“I’m still in touch with people from that assignment,” Porter said. “The base was more active than it is now. It was my first time being that close to headquarters, where I think I’d been once before that. I love Fort Worth—I still prefer it over any other area in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.”

After about 3½ years at Carswell, Porter moved to headquarters, where he worked in a newly created “Cyber” Region, which provided resources to internet, catalog, direct marketing, call centers and financial marketing functions.

“I was a merchandise manager on the hardlines side,” Porter said. “I got more of an appreciation for what buyers do. Online shopping was still in its infancy at the time.

“Mike Beverly, who was the COO, wanted a certain amount of items online,” he continued. “So we were looking everywhere we could to put stuff online. And it was  all done manually—we didn’t have the technologies we have today. But it was fun going to conferences and going out buying and talking to vendors.”

After about a year and a half at headquarters, there was another change of scenery.

Back to the desert

“When 9/11 happened, I was at headquarters,” Porter said. “We were frantic because we thought, ‘This is a federal building—it could be a target. We need to know what’s going on.’ There was a lot of silence. Everyone was watching one TV. Tears were falling.”

Less than two months later, Porter was assigned to Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona, where he became store manager in late October 2001. Less than three years later, he was promoted to general manager and oversaw the opening of a new BX at Davis-Monthan.

“I was a hero in that little community because we brought all these new food concepts in,” he said. “There was a Popeyes and a Starbucks. They gave me the credit for it, but I didn’t do anything—I think it had been planned for years. I just happened to be there when it came to fruition.”

From September 2006 to September 2009, Porter was general manager at the Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston Exchange. Among the big events that happened during his tenure there was Hurricane Ike, which struck the Texas Gulf Coast in 2008.

When troops deployed to the Houston area to help with recovery efforts, the Exchange sent a support team from the Fort Sam, JBSA-Lackland and Randolph AFB Exchanges; the Waco Distribution Center; and Austin’s Camp Mabry Exchange, which was also in Porter’s area of responsibility.

“After Ike hit, we stood up a mobile field Exchange at Ellington Field,” Porter said. “People didn’t have anything in that area of Houston at the time because there was no power. Going toward Galveston, there were boats on the freeway!”

Moving up

Back when Porter was working at NAS JRB Fort Worth, one of his bosses was Bob Stack, who was main store manager. Porter met Bob’s wife Karen, who would ultimately become Chief Logistics Officer and Executive Vice President before she retired in early 2024.

“Karen Stack probably played the most impactful role in helping me throughout my career,” Porter said. “I’m an introvert. I don’t know why, but she pushed me and put me into positions where I could be exposed to people who could help me.”

After Javier Cerna moved o another position, Karen Stack replaced him as chief of Western Region.

“She’s the one who moved me to Fort Sam Houston,” Porter said. “And she’s the one who made me Western Region area manager, which is now a VP job.”

As area manager, Porter oversaw operations throughout the Southwest at stores in San Antonio, West Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

“The thing I liked about it was helping junior managers come up,” he said. “Everybody did really good at the time. We had some good results.”

After about a year as area manager, Porter joined the Store Operations team, then became vice president of career management and talent in Human Resources. He worked there until 2015, when he shifted to vice president of services and commercial leasing.

“I’d always liked operations, and Services was getting back into operations, really,” he said. “But I enjoyed HR. I have a greater appreciation for it than I had prior to being in that role, because I could see how impactful it is. We’re only as good as the people we employ, so trying to attract talent and help that talent appreciate the mission was rewarding.”

After more than five years as vice president of Services, Porter became vice president of food in December 2020—during the first year of the COVID era.

“Everything was upside-down during COVID,” Porter said. “But we worked well with brand partners. We worked with Store Ops and Merchandising to make sure we had safety precautions in place, with Plexiglass and things of that nature; Our frontline associates were still in-person—while everybody else was teleworking, they were still front and center.”

Having been vice president of services and vice president of food, Porter became senior vice president of both in July 2021. Both sides have thrived during his tenure, adding scores of self-service 24/7 stores, cell towers and new brand-name restaurants every year.

“It’s going to be weird to not look at my email every 30 seconds, with someone telling me about a new requirement,” Porter said. “We get a lot of support from the field in making things happen, with services business managers and region chiefs. We have bakeries, we have food plants, we have the School Meal Program overseas. I’d take calls or have meetings at 6 o’clock in the evening then go home and get right back online.”

Retirement will be much simpler.

Retirement plans

Porter never deployed, but did get to travel a lot during his time at the Exchange, spanning the Southwest when he was area manager and visiting bakeries and plants in Germany and in Pacific Region. He is looking forward to settling down.

“The good Lord’s got me this far, so I’m just going to take it easy,” he said. “I don’t really have any plans other than to decompress. I’m just blessed to have an opportunity to retire.

“My parents are older. They’re still in Arkansas. So my biggest plan, I think, is to see after them. I’ve been trying to get there once every three months or so, and now I need to increase that cadence.”

“Family serving family” has left its mark on Porter after 36 years at the Exchange.

“I think we embody those words,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a cliché. I think we live that. Exchange associates are all about that. Taking care of the military and taking care of each other.”

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