History
In 1992, four people sat around a card table answering phones at headquarters— the Army & Air Force Exchange Service’s first call center, which handled inquiries about the Deferred Payment Plan, the forerunner of today’s MILITARY STAR® card A year later, the call center moved to the first floor of HQ with about 120 associates.…
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Dating as far back as 1964 when a killer earthquake struck Alaska, Exchange associates have deployed to the destructive scenes left in Mother Nature’s wake to serve those who served with recovery efforts. The disasters include raging forest fires in the Pacific Northwest; floods and volcanic eruptions around the world; 2005’s Hurricane Katrina; 2012’s Superstorm…
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Some exchanges around the world are now just fond memories. Many of them started in the early days of World War II to train Army pilots, but then closed after combat ended. In Texas alone, air bases were once located in Amarillo; Austin; Fort Worth; Laredo; and Army posts in Galveston and Mineral Wells, among…
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Once upon a time, shoppers couldn’t find televisions or computers for sale anywhere in the Exchanges. Since 1949, the House Armed Services Committee and Department of Defense have regulated what the Exchange can sell. In 1986, the committee gave the Exchange permission to sell computers in 130 computer shops worldwide, which became known as “PowerZones”…
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On Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian college students, who supported the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 American staff members who worked there hostage. The hostages were freed on Jan. 20, 1981, after 444 days of captivity. Three days later, associates at Germany’s Hainerberg shopping center greeted them as they…
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Did an elephant once work at a post exchange? Well, yes. And he got paid in bananas and bread. In 1944, the PX officer of the Southeast Asia Command headquarters during World War II moved a 2,600-pound electric refrigerator into a PX in India with the help of some Soldiers and an elephant named Karunavathi.…
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The Exchange’s foray into name-brand restaurants came in 1977 when Baskin-Robbins opened its famous ice-cream shop at Edwards AFB, Calif. In 1984, Burger King became the first name-brand burger restaurant to join the AAFES family, opening 185 BKs throughout the world on Army and Air Force installations. The first one was at Ansbach, Germany. Other…
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The Army & Air Force Exchange Service dished up its first school lunches back in 1955 when school cafeterias opened on military installations in the United Kingdom. In 1980, the Exchange was designated the sole school feeding authority for the Army and Air Force. In 2019, the Exchange served 2.6 million meals in 76 Department…
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In 1965, the Army & Air Force Exchange Service took over a handful of PXs from the Navy in Vietnam the day after Christmas. At the height of the war in the late 1960s, the Exchange served American Warfighters with 50 major stores, 1,800 concessions and 180 food facilities, from cafeterias to snack wagons. On…
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In its 125-year history, America’s Warfighters could always rely on the Exchange to be there for them, regardless of whether the “stores” were tents, pack mules, bamboo huts, mobile trucks, boats, choppers or spacious modern malls. In fact, the organization remains as relevant today as it was on the open frontier more than a century…
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