GRAPEVINE, Texas — As the Dallas skyline radiated as much blue neon as the city could muster Thursday night in a show of support for medical and other first-responder personnel on the front lines of the COVID-19 fight, offers of prayer and physical protection were shining brightly too.
Members of Gateway Church Southlake, in a parade of vehicles adorned with signs and balloons, gathered in parking lot No. 2 of Baylor Scott & White in Grapevine.
"We're going to ask you to stay in your cars, and pray for the patients and the staff here," pastor Steve Dulin said over a loudspeaker. The congregation has already given the hospital more than $100,000 to help buy protective equipment. Thursday night, as doctors and nurses and other hospital staff gathered outside to witness the spectacle, they offered prayers too.
"We're going to do everything we can to protect them," Dulin said in prayer. "We're buying PPE for them. But Lord, we pray that you protect them."
In nearby Coppell, a company that normally makes plastics for airplanes and computers is doing its best to offer physical protection.
"If your job requires you to get inside of this radius," Insul-Fab President and CEO Shelby Ricketts said while standing at the center of a 12-foot diameter circle he placed on his shop floor as a visual aid for his employees, "you really need to have some sort of face protection be it a mask or a face shield."
The 3M Company, a frequent collaborator with Insul-Fab, asked for assistance. The Coppell company added clear plastic face shields to its production line with the ability, Ricketts says, to make as many as 10,000 a day, enough material on site to make more than 100,000 and material on order making it possible to produce 250,000 more. The shields as being shipped directly to hospitals and medical facilities.
"We immediately mobilized out engineering team because we knew there was a need out there that needed to be fulfilled. We're going to work all this weekend, we have people coming in Good Friday through Easter Sunday, because we know we need to catch up and be ready," Ricketts said.
Meanwhile, at Baylor Scott & White Grapevine Thursday night, the members of Gateway Church honked horns, played Christian music on their car radios and waved at medical staff who answered back with the flashlights of their cell phones waved through the hospitals darkened windows. It was a powerful enough show of support to drive Baylor Scott & White Grapevine president Chris York to tears.
"Your generosity has been overwhelming," York said in an emotional thank you to the crowd. "But this prayer service has touched our soul and we are so grateful."
Grateful that the rest of us continue to show our support, whether it's by making protective equipment or offering a protective prayer, as the fight against a common enemy rages on.
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