#FlashbackFriday: Stories of Exchange Support After the 9/11 Attacks

Monday will mark the 22^nd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, when terrorists hijacked jet planes, flying them into both World Trade Center towers and into the Pentagon. Passengers on United Flight 93 died preventing an attack on the U.S. Capitol, overcoming hijackers to crash that plane into a field in Somerset Count, Pennsylvania. Nearly 3,000 people died in the attacks.

The day affected all Americans, and some Exchange associates experienced it firsthand. Bob Ellis, then the head of the Exchange’s Washington office, had stepped out of a meeting at the Pentagon seven minutes before American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the building, hitting the room that he had been in.

Beth Goodman-Bluhm, then manager at Andrews AFB, Md., worked with Ellis to help set up a mobile field Exchange outside the Pentagon, staffed 24/7 by associates to support rescue workers. (Goodman-Bluhm retired from the Exchange in December 2022 as a vice president in Central Region but continues with the organization as general manager of the Kuwait/Jordan Exchange.)

Beth Goodman-Bluhm, then the store manager at the Andrews Air Force Base Exchange, assists troops in a mobile field exchange at the Pentagon (the damaged building can be seen from the rear door).

Steve Williams, then-manager of Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton Exchange, had just started a meeting to discuss a store renovation when his assistant told him that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. The next day, Williams, Area Manager Ray Black and then-West Point General Manager Allan Heasty started preparing for the arrival of a mobile field Exchange, which was in Battery Park at the southern end of Manhattan by Sept. 13 to support National Guard troops.

Steve Williams, in red, then-manager of Brooklyn’s Fort Hamilton Exchange, serves snacks to National Guard members responding to the 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Center.

Associates from Fort Hamilton, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Fort Drum, Carlisle Barracks and West Point volunteered to go to New York to support National Guard and Reserve members in the weeks after the attacks. At the Pentagon, volunteers came from Exchanges at Andrews Air Force Base, Fort Myers, Bolling Air Force Base and Fort Belvoir to support relief workers.

Exchanges worldwide contributed. Some examples:

• More than 2,500 Exchange associates signed a 24-by-4-foot banner with the inscription “United We Stand,” which in October was presented to the administrative assistant of the Secretary of the Army to be displayed at the Pentagon.
• Brian Hartley and Scott Moore, the truck drivers who transported donated goods from the Dan Daniel Distribution Center to New York, stuck around to help set up the mobile field Exchange, then spent the day assisting customers and helping run the register.
• At Fort Eustis in southeastern Virginia and Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, associates held bake sales to raise money for a Red Cross emergency relief fund.
• During its Toyland opening on Sept. 15, 2001, the Whiteman Air Force Base Exchange in Missouri held a “We Love NYC” campaign to collect money for victims of the World Trade Center attacks.
• Associates at Travis Air Force Base in California delivered breakfast and lunch to troops who were manning the gates, ensuring the safety of the installation in the days after attack.
• Associates at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, delivered doughnuts to weary Soldiers protecting the post.
• In Puerto Rico, the Exchange provided support for more than 100 Puerto Rican Army National Reservists who flew to Washington to assist with cleanup efforts at the Pentagon.
• In Hawaii, Schofield Barracks conducted Operation Aloha Lei, assembling a memorial lei more than two football fields long with floral messages honoring attack victims.
• In Heidelberg, Germany, the associate who ran the airfield snack bar stayed open on Sept. 12, when most facilities were closed, to singlehandedly support troops. Airfield command center sent a letter to the European Stars and Stripes thanking her for her service.
• In February 2002, after New York City ran out of U.S. flags, the Exchange provided 600 flags to the city for funerals and burials of first responders who died in the attacks.

Sometimes the Exchange received support: In Germany, three days after the attacks, students from Gruenstadt Secondary School, Leininger Gymnasium, presented the interim general manager of the Gruenstadt Depot Exchange with a condolence list, as well as about DM 4,600 (about $2,400 in U.S. dollars at the time) they had collected, which was given to the local Red Cross chapter.

In 2021, Ellis, Goodman-Bluhm, Williams and others shared their 9/11 memories for a 20^th anniversary story in the Exchange Post. You can read it here.

Sources: Exchange Post archives, National Park Service

A U.S. flag hangs from the Pentagon after the attacks. Bob Ellis, then the Exchange’s Washington Office director in 2001, had left the Pentagon minutes before American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into it, hitting the room that he had been in.