FORT BELVOIR, Va. –
Doris Cabbell was 19 years old and grateful to be a civil servant working in South Philadelphia for the Defense Supply Agency when it started shipping food to troops in Vietnam in 1966. She was still there when DSA provided supplies to the Apollo 11 mission, and when it expanded commissary support overseas.
For 60 years, Cabbell has given her best to what is now the Defense Logistics Agency.
“I’ve enjoyed every job I’ve had, and you have to enjoy your work to keep coming in every day,” said the 78-year-old, who will retire in January.
As a business systems analyst, Cabbell ensures customers' orders in the Subsistence Total Order and Receipt Electronic System, known as STORES, include correct information such as item numbers and delivery locations.
“Doris understands that the role she plays directly affects servicemen and women getting their meals and being able to eat, whether it’s special holiday meals or just everyday items,” said Kelly Daly, Cabbell’s supervisor and head of the STORES Help Desk.
Cabbell arrives at her desk at 5:30 a.m. every morning and is so loyal to the mission that she sometimes logs onto her DLA computer in the evenings and weekends to make sure there are no emergencies, even though Daly encourages a healthy work-life balance.
“She doesn’t gloat about solving problems or helping people. She just does it,” Daly said.
Cabbell began her federal career as a temporary GS-2 clerk for the Army Signal Corps after she graduated from high school and took the civil service test in hopes of following her uncle’s footsteps. She considered working for the federal government a privilege and appreciated benefits like annual leave and sick leave.
After six months, Cabbell moved to the Internal Revenue Service, and five months later, in 1965, she was offered a permanent position at the Clothing and Textiles Directorate of what was then the Defense Personnel Support Center. Still a clerk, she assisted contract specialists, then called procurement agents, by typing up contracts.
DPSC’s mission gradually expanded to include food, drugs and medical supplies, and Cabbell worked her way through each commodity until landing in the subsistence directorate in 1969. Her first job there was with the commissary support team, where she worked via phone with
veterinarians conducting food safety inspections as new products arrived at commissaries.
“If a product was not correctly annotated on the boxes with the contract number or expiration dates were wrong, I had the authority to reject the shipment,” she said. “The only thing I couldn’t reject was Gerber baby food.”
Cabbell stayed in the subsistence directorate, eventually becoming a procurement assistant and then a supply systems analyst, until subsistence program management was transferred to DLA Information Operations in 2007. By then, she’d used every DLA information technology system that supported subsistence during conflicts in Vietnam, Kosovo, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.
“She’s never shied away from new technology,” Daly said. “And usually, Doris is the first to read messages that go out to the workforce on enterprise IT changes. She’ll highlight things and share them with the rest of the team to keep us all informed.”
Cabbell remembers using an electric typewriter and four colors of carbon paper for letters and memos and having to manually clock in and out of work each day.
As for monumental shifts like the renaming of the DSA to DLA, Cabbell remained flexible.
“Changing the agency’s name was a big deal at the time. It was the same when the Defense Personnel Support Center later became the Defense Supply Center Philadelphia and then DLA Troop Support,” she said. “But I’ve always just gone with the flow. A lot of the changes turned out to be really good ones.”
Daly has supervised Cabbell for eight years but first met her as a DLA intern 19 years ago.
“I never thought in a million years that Doris would actually work for me one day. I always thought at some point I’d probably work for her because she definitely knows her stuff,” Daly said.
Despite her humble nature and preference for privacy, Cabbell allowed her coworkers to host a retirement bash complete with a DJ, poems and even a comedian at her favorite restaurant.
“I’m not a person who does a lot of talking about herself, but one thing I’m proud of is I beat my father in working. He worked 41 years, but I put 19 years on him,” she said, attributing her work dedication to the way her parents raised her.
Editor’s Note: Only one other current employee, an environmental protection specialist for DLA Disposition Services, has more time on the agency’s rolls than Cabbell, according to DLA Human Resource records.