By Clark Judge.
A smart man once said, “It’s kindness that helps people cope with crisis.” Seldom have those words resonated as they do here and now.
Random acts of kindness have been so evident in and around Killingworth during the COVID-19 lockdown that they’re no longer random. They’re frequent, and they’re everywhere … from Annette Sachs Cook handing out free face masks at the waste transfer station … to La Foresta Restaurant donating food to 600 persons at the Beechwood retirement community … to the posting of hand-made “Thank You” signs throughout the area.
Now comes this.
For the fifth time in the last five weeks, the Killingworth Ambulance Association has been the recipient of a gracious – and necessary — donation from a town resident. Larry Anderson, a PMO manager within the Research, Development and Engineering division of inLine Plastics, this week gave the association 50 clear plastic face shields to help with its supply of PPE during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Anderson wasn’t asked, nor was he pushed. He did it because … well, let him explain.
“When we saw the COVID virus hitting, a number of us (at inLine) got frustrated and said, ‘What can we do to help?’ “ he said. “We wanted to do our part. We didn’t want to sit here helplessly. We wanted to do something.”
So they did.
Tom Orkisz, owner of inLine Plastics, had read an article detailing how NYU developed a design for open-source face shields to protect front-line healthcare workers, and he pointed Anderson and his co-workers in that direction. After research and contact with companies involved in the production of shields, they decided to give it a try.
Only with one caveat.
“We wanted to do it on a donation basis,” Anderson said. “It’s all done on personal time.”
That’s important to note. Where some companies retooled their businesses to make and market plastic shields, inLine has not. The company is a successful manufacturer of safe, hygienic and leak-proof food packaging that includes the Safe-T-Fresh line, and it hasn’t shifted its emphasis during the COVID-19 alert.
It has, however, expanded it.
“We’re not trying to develop a new product line,” said Anderson. “This is on a pure donation basis.”
Assembly is done by volunteers, with employees taking kits home for the weekend, then returning Monday with finished products. Because a shield can take a minute to construct, Anderson said, it’s not unusual for an individual to return with “a couple hundred.”
When the process began, inLine volunteers were urged to contact healthcare groups or first responders within their geographic locales to see if they were interested. So Anderson reached out to the KAA and asked.
It was.
The shields, part of what Anderson estimated as 1,500-2,000 distributed by inLine, were picked up earlier this week and included a note that read, “Thanks to you and all the heroes on the front lines of COVID-19. This is a difficult time and we know that you and your team are working diligently to keep us safe.”
But the KAA is hardly alone. Hospitals in Bridgeport, Norwalk, UConn and Yale have been contacted. EMS groups throughout the state have been, too, with Anderson saying he plans to drop off 100 shields with the Madison Fire Department. He would’ve done the same with Killingworth, he said, but, like others, he didn’t know the Volunteer Fire Company and Ambulance Association were separate entities.
“We will happily make 10,000 or 20,000 more for others if there’s the demand,” he said. “We’re just trying to figure out where our market is for these donations.”
They just did. And the KAA is as grateful as it was when it received a donation last week … and the week before that … and the week before that … and …
“The donations ae heartwarming,” said Dan O’Sullivan, president of the KAA. “Beyond the ones that protect us and make us safer, they tell us we are not alone … that we are all in this together. I’m amazed at the generosity and creativity of people finding ways they can help.”
