129 Years of Family Serving Family: Catherine ‘Kitty’ Harple, Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling

One in a series honoring the Exchange’s 129 years of family serving family.

Who she is: Catherine “Kitty” Harple, Bolling Express manager

Years with the Exchange: 34 years

Military connections: Her father and her uncle served in the Marine Corps. Her father served from 1958 to 1968. He was a staff sergeant when he was honorably discharged.

What brought her to the Exchange: Harple came to the Exchange as a way to give back to her community.

Her career history: Harple has held numerous positions within the Exchange, bouncing between Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, where she started as a Loss Prevention associate, and Joint Base Andrews, where she’s worked in management roles, including as a sales area manager. She has also worked at the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst Exchange as an operations manager and worked as a manager in Military Clothing Sales.

Her five years in Military Clothing Sales was one of her favorite experiences. “I understand why once you work in Military Clothing Sales, you never want to want to leave. You’re serving the military’s needs. The connections with the team working to get the product to your customer and the satisfaction knowing you did everything you could is rewarding.”

We Go Where You Go: Harple knows firsthand just how true the Exchange motto is. She’s deployed to Bosnia, Iraq and Greenland. “In Bosnia, I was in Sarajevo at a NATO base. It was an awesome experience. Iraq was also an awesome experience. We were the first ones up. We didn’t have lights in our trailer, so we only had daylight to operate.

“One time, we were emptying a couple of trailers and didn’t realize we were so close to the wall —just a stone’s throw away from the outside.

“In Thule, now Pituffik, that was a totally different experience from Iraq. It was cold. It got to negative 60. You could walk out the dorm room and get a taxi – they drove you everywhere. You could walk if you wanted to. We only had five Exchange associates. It was just us five running the store. Volunteers helped us stock, especially when the ships came in. We only got two ships a year.”

The Land of Great Length: Harple said working in Greenland came with unique challenges.

“I think everyone who wants to go into management should go. It teaches you to think on the fly. There is no one there to help you, so you have to figure it out yourself. When we wanted something in winter, we had to get it by dog sled. Our neighbor is Santa Claus. We’re at the North Pole!”

Greenland left its mark on Harple. “There was nothing green. It was all white. In summer, it was all brown. There was one fake tree put up near Dundas Mountain. A little green fake tree. We had tours. We went to the waterfall—the only one in Thule. It was a 6-foot waterfall. We rented ATVs from the community center. They had cabins in the mountains, and in the summer, you could rent them. A group of us got into a car and went to see the glaciers. We got a tour of the big mountain. We even got a tour of Det. 1, where the big space satellite is, which was funny because I was up on the mezzanine walking around the satellite and it decided to move! I had to duck! It moved so fast.

“I got a history lesson there before we took the tour. You really don’t realize what is in space. We were too far north to see the Northern Lights. We went to the highest mountain and actually did see them southward.

“Personally, I didn’t have a difficult time. It was an experience I would have never had or ever again if it wasn’t for the Exchange. It was an actual honor. I loved Thule.”

Friends and family: “My family was well taken care of. We had phones and internet. The internet wasn’t that good, but we had it. I could stay in contact with them. When I got to see friends and family, it was awesome. There are also simple things of home you realize you don’t have when you’re deployed like that. It’s things like getting in the car and going where you want, when you want, seeing friends and family.”

Memorable moments: “I’ve had so many memorable moments with the Exchange. It’s the people you work with. They come and go. There are so many managers you respect and become friends with. I’m still friends with many of them. My favorite former boss, Jean Kinsey, was in Loss Prevention. She was like a second mother to me. She’s the one who hired me in LP. She passed a few years after she retired. She guided me through being a young 20-year-old making bad decisions. She would tell me, ‘Hey, you’re going down the wrong path.’ I learned a lot.

“When you move, the people you’re with are also doing the same thing. Fort a short period of time, you become each other’s family. In Iraq, we had the hospital on our post, and I ended up becoming the contact person so some patients wouldn’t be lonely. We had one girl that got bit by a camel spider. She was in the hospital two days, and someone from the hospital said ‘Hey, one of your own teammates is here.’ She was someone I knew from Fort Benning (now Fort Moore), where we deployed from. I visited every day. Another time, one of our interpreters ended up having a heart issue. I visited him. I ended up being the contact person to make sure no one was left behind—that someone was always there for them.

“I’m still friends with a girl from Bosnia. She is a local girl. I met her in ’98. She was a teenager. Here, you see people blossom in their life. You never know, also, when you’ll run into someone again. Two from Greenland—two ladies, they were both Danes—came to the States for training. They stopped in at Andrews and screamed ‘Kitty!’ I was like, ‘Oh my God! What are you doing here in the States? Here for training?’ You never know when you’ll run into someone. It doesn’t matter the country.”

Family Serving Family: “In Iraq, at the green zone, we had a young Soldier come in. He couldn’t have been more than 18 at the time. He was just so excited we had peanut butter. He had to wait in line for about an hour because the line was wrapped around the corner. Just being able to give back since I never joined the service, to be there and help them have a little taste of home—it was just an awesome feeling. ‘Family serving family’ also has many meanings to me — not just serving our military members and their families, but when you serve with other Exchange associates, you become family especially since you get to know your co-workers and staff. You just connect with a strong bond, just like your own family.”