IG’s Chief of Inspections Takes a Nostalgic Journey as She Nears Retirement

After a 20-year Army career, Lt. Col. Faith Lee, chief of inspections in the Inspector General’s Office, is preparing to retire in October. In a way, one of her last assignments for the Exchange brought her career to a full circle.

Lt. Col. Faith Lee, chief of inspections in the Inspector General’s Office, in the mess hall at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Lee, who is about to retire, is a West Point alumnus whose final inspection tour for the Exchange included a stop at her alma mater.

In the spring, Lee led a team that conducted inspections of Exchange stores at 11 installations in the Eastern Region. One of them was at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which Lee graduated from in 2002.

“It was really great being back there,” Lee said. “I didn’t do this on purpose, but the schedule worked out so that we went there on a Friday. We worked on Friday, then we had the weekend, then we worked Monday. So I was able to drive and walk around West Point and see places.”

Lee had returned in 2012 for a 10-year class reunion, but there had been many changes even since then. As she walked around the campus, she enjoyed seeing new facilities and buildings and watching cadets. “A lot has changed there, too,” she said. “They have a lot more uniform options than we did 20 years ago.”

Specific places inspired memories.

“I did crew while I was at West Point,” she said. “So looking out on the Hudson River was definitely nostalgic. I’d think, ‘Man, I spent a lot of hours on this river.’ … I remembered that my cousin visited me and found the spot where we took pictures.”

Lee’s team, which also included Assistant Inspectors General Paul Martinez and LaRon Pope, ate lunch in the mess hall with Cadets. “That was the same as when I was there,” she said, “but it was different. It was way louder. They play music during lunch, which they did not do 20 years ago.”

As a Cadet, Lee was an Exchange customer to a limited extent. The lack of a car and the distance to the PX kept her from going more often.

Lt. Col Faith Lee with Katy Litterer, general manager of the West Point Exchange.

“But I grew up in the Army, so I’ve been an Exchange shopper as long as I can remember,” she said. “My dad commissioned when I was 3, so I can’t remember a time when I didn’t go to the Exchange. That’s just where you went.”

During the inspection tour, the IG team talked with associates to get feedback on Exchange life and morale, looked into the relationships between Exchanges and installation leadership, examined physical security, checked out how Expresses are promoting BE FIT and more.

“I think it was a very successful inspection cycle,” she said. “We had great conversations with general managers and store managers.”

Lee, who joined the Exchange in 2020, has enjoyed seeing the organization from the inside after nearly 40 years of seeing it as a dependent and then a Soldier. As a lifelong shopper, she appreciates how the Exchange provides a taste of home.

Lt. Col. Faith Lee when she was  Cadet Faith Lee. Lee graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 2002.

“My very first deployment was in 2003,” she said. “I landed in Kuwait the day the U.S. officially declared the war on terror. I was 21, 22 years old and thought, ‘I’m going to war.’ I packed everything that I thought I could possibly use into a footlocker and thought that’s all I had for a year.

“It was a while before there was a PX. The first time I was able to go to one, I had to wait in line because there were limits to how long we could be inside. Then we’d step in and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, I can buy …’ It didn’t even matter; buy something, anything that was from home, whether it was a granola bar or peanut butter. It was that sense of, ‘I’ve been gone a couple of months, I’ve been eating MREs and now I can buy something!’”

Lee now lives in Mansfield, Texas, about 25 miles southwest of headquarters. It’s the first time her family hasn’t lived on a military installation. “The first time we drove out to Joint Reserve Base Naval Air Station Fort Worth, my youngest was 9 or 10 and she said, ‘Ooh, can we go to the PX?’ It’s one of those familiar things from installation to installation. The first time we went there, it was still that sense of home. When you’re in a new place and you don’t know anybody, there’s still the PX.”