{"id":93532,"date":"2016-05-02T13:52:25","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T13:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/native\/uncategorized\/salute-to-mom\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T09:39:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T09:39:58","slug":"salute-to-mom","status":"publish","type":"native","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/native\/exchange\/salute-to-mom\/","title":{"rendered":"Salute to Mom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In honor of Military Moms everywhere, this story is provided and presented by our sponsor The Army & Air Force Exchange Service. The Exchange was established by General Orders No. 46 in 1895 to provide goods and services to military members and their dependents. <\/em>Mother\u2019s Day looms large in the retail world. But when you serve the military customer, you need to be aware of the special role that mothers play in the military family.“When Exchange creative teams started brainstorming about our annual Mother\u2019s Day campaign, it was clear we needed to tell a much larger story about the significance of the military mom” said Ana Middleton, Chief Merchandising Officer for the Exchange. “The Salute to Mom<\/em><\/strong> campaign features lots of images of moms, but we wanted take it a step further than featuring models who looked like moms,” said Middleton. “We wanted to talk to real military families to build an experience that gives a first-hand account of military moms and the sacrifices they make. So we asked our customers about the moms in their families.”Exchange Digital Media Networks Producer, Amy Mitchell visited Fort Hood<\/strong> and NAS Fort Worth JRB<\/strong> (Carswell) to speak with Exchange customers about the military moms in their families and she heard a fairly common theme: Mom is the backbone\u2026Mom is the glue that holds it all together.Through her interviews, it became clear to Mitchell that it was not always an actual “mom” who was holding the family together. “Military families are much bigger than just moms,” she said. “There are a lot of people stepping in to do a mom\u2019s job. It could be a grandmother, an aunt, a sister\u2014there are a lot of other \u2018mom\u2019 figures.”One example of this is Lisa, a military grandmother whose son is a single parent. He is deployed and she and her