Ken Wright, the chairman of the Southampton Hospital Association and owner of Wright and Company Construction, has organized a team of more than 100 people to provide medical workers with 10,000 isolation gowns, which have been in high demand and short supply as the Covid-19 pandemic rages.
The gown project began with Mr. Wright and Dr. Darrin Wiggins, vice chairman of Stony Brook Southampton Hospital Emergency Department, who quickly came up with a prototype similar to the commercially available protective gowns already worn at the hospital.
Participation from the East End community was crucial to the next steps. Michael Reilly of Reilly Architectural (a division of Pella Corporation), Tracy Kappenberg of Riverhead Building Supply, and Leonard Skuggevik, the Tuckahoe School superintendent, stepped in to help.
Riverhead Building Supply provided 300,000 square feet of plastic sheeting — enough to cover eight acres — and 10 miles of tape to put the gowns together.
Reilly Architectural’s operations had been suspended in compliance with a state order, but members of its staff came in to cut the plastic sheeting to form in its Calverton plant. The turnaround was fast; it took less than a week to receive the materials and prepare the equipment to cut thousands of blanks. The 100 volunteers, including more than 25 employees of Wright and Company, packed 50 gown blanks into each bin, along with tape and assembly instructions.
A team of seven truck drivers delivered the bins to other volunteers, who were working from home. Once a bin of 50 gowns was completed, a driver picked it up and dropped off another fresh bin of blanks ready for assembly. The bagged isolation gowns went to the Tuckahoe School for storage and distribution to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, as needed.
“No request was too large and everyone eagerly jumped aboard the project,” said Mr. Wright. “In these troubled times, for those of us that are staying home, it’s so valuable to be able do something that feels worthwhile, and this absolutely feels worthwhile. Our community wants to do everything possible to support our local healthcare workers on the front lines battling Covid-19.”
This article has been modified to correct an error in the number of gowns produced was 10,000 not 20,000 as originally stated.