One in a series honoring the Exchange’s 131 years of family serving family
Who she is: Amanda Combs, replenishment & inventory analyst, HQ-MD
Years with the Exchange: 24
Exchange connections: “Family serving family” stories don’t get much more “family” than Amanda’s.
“I have connections on both sides, because my grandmother, aunt, uncles and mother worked for the Exchange,” she said. “And then I married into another Exchange family because my husband’s parents and sister worked for the Exchange.”
Combs’ grandparents, Royce and Lillian Brown, owned a chain of suburban newspapers in the Dallas area, which Lillian took over after Royce had a stroke. It was a family business, so when Lillian sold the chain around 1988, one of Combs’ aunts joined the Exchange in a marketing position. The aunt’s husband joined soon after, working as a packer in the Fashion Distribution Center, which was then based in Dallas.
“And then he got his brother up there,” Combs said. “So it was my aunt and two uncles that worked there in the early ’90s until the FDC warehouse turned into the printing plant. Then the printing plant moved to north Dallas. And my uncles worked there until it shut down.”
Then Combs’ mother, Brenda Benson, came to the Exchange in 1989, starting in a temporary accounting position and then staying until 2006. Sometime in the ’90s, Combs’ grandmother Lillian also joined the Exchange, working at the AAFES Operations Center in north Dallas. She retired in 2009.
“When my mom and grandmother worked at AAFES, they got me here, via one of their shared managers,” she said “I had been a babysitter for the grandchild of [business program specialist] Angela Oliphant, one of the women they worked for. When she didn’t need a babysitter anymore, she said, ‘You know, you might be good at the Exchange.’ I interviewed and became her temporary procurement assistant.”
Around the same time, the secretary for Vic Combs, a hardlines divisional merchandise manager, had to make a temporary move to another office. So while Amanda was working for Oliphant, she also worked for Combs as a temporary secretary. In 2003, she became a permanent associate.
“In 2006, I met Carol Combs, Vic’s wife,” she said. “They had both retired from the Exchange but then contracted back in. When Carol came back, she wound up in the same department as me. Once I met her, she basically said, ‘I want you for my son.’ And she made that happen. So now I’m married to Matthew Combs, who has applied at AAFES, but never actually worked here.”
But his sister, MD Business Analyst Martha Smith, has worked for the Exchange since 2005.
And there’s more: Wayne Northcutt, a fleet administration tech in logistics, and Wesley Northcutt, like Combs a replenishment & inventory analyst, are Combs’ cousins. Her aunt, Kelly Northcutt, worked in marketing as a graphic designer.
Growing up with the Exchange: “My mom used to take us to work all the time. You’d see kids at AAFES headquarters because people would bring them there because we had a store and a restaurant. And I was just one of those kids playing in the halls”
Family working with family: “I worked directly beside my grandmother. In fact, she did some of my training, because she was also a procurement assistant. When I went upstairs to SBR (sales-based replenishment), my mom was on that floor. We ate lunch together almost every day and we rode to work together. Depending on what was going on, my sister-in-law and cousins would sometimes ride in with us. We always traveled in packs.
“For a while, I couldn’t walk through the hallway without being stopped by someone, because we all look so much alike that people would say, ‘You have to be related to so-and-so.’ A lot of times, I was mistaken for my mom.”
What she does: “Around 2008, I was promoted to business analyst and that’s pretty much the job I’ve had in some capacity since then. It’s basically inventory management, making sure that product is available for stores. The replenishment is set according to sales. Within the past year, I’ve become part of the merchandising modernization team. We’re still developing it but it’s very groundbreaking.”
Coolest part of her job: “It’s the stories we hear and see about how our work has affected military families that are out there and wouldn’t normally have access to the things that we can get them access to. It’s any kind of military support that we give, knowing how badly it’s needed and how much it’s appreciated. It’s knowing that we make that kind of a difference.”
Memorable moments: “I worked on the jewelry team for a while. One lieutenant’s wife had gone into the McChord Air Force Base main store, looking for a diamond ring. It wasn’t in the store at the time, but it was in stock at the warehouse. This was during the holidays, and that particular day, everybody had gone to a Christmas party but I was kind of lagging behind to wrap up some stuff. I wound up on a phone call asking if we could get the ring en route to the store. So instead of going to the Christmas party, I spent the afternoon finding out exactly where the ring was and how we could get it to the store. We got it in the mail in time for Christmas and got “Rock Star” kudos for that from all the military people.
“And when COVID happened, so many people were out of toilet paper and hand sanitizer. I was on teams where it was basically our job to keep those orders going and making sure that all our stores had those things in stock. Amazon was out of them and you couldn’t go to Walmart and get it. But you could get it at the Exchange.”
Going where you go: Although Combs has never deployed, several of her family members have.
“My cousin Wesley deployed to Kuwait as a mail server, driving mail trucks around. My Aunt Kelly deployed to Kuwait.” (Kelly Northcutt deployed in 2006 with Gloria Michael, a longtime friend and fellow graphic designer who was getting ready to retire.)
Along with all her family’s Exchange connections, there are also some military connections.
“My Uncle Owen, who also worked for AAFES briefly, served in Vietnam.
His son served in the Army and deployed to Iraq from 2007 to 2009.”
What ‘family serving family’ means to her: “It means being in the trenches with our men and women who are out there fighting for this country, being able to say, ‘I’m doing this for you because you’re doing something for my country.’ It’s important to me, knowing that they’re able to get that Snickers bar, even though they’re in the middle of nowhere and thought they wouldn’t see a Snickers bar again for six months or whatever.
“I could spend a week telling you stories about how it’s been just for my family in general. All the fun times we’ve had—some struggles too, but mostly fun times that we’ve had just working in the building together. It’s like a family business within a family business because in addition to the blood relatives, there are the ’families’ you develop while you’re working here because everybody’s so close and in the know with what’s going on with each one of us. I have developed relationships working for AAFES that have been life-changing and will continue to enrich my life forever!”
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