Titusville company making masks inspired by JFK quote
TITUSVILLE, Fla. - Lyuba Pearce is focused, feeling patriotic, and she’s sewing face masks as fast as her fingers will go. Her husband, Patrick, jokes that she’s the talent and he’s the business manager.
Together they own Lightwing Studios. The company typically makes covers for instruments and liners for guitar cases, but they’ve repurposed themselves- to help in the coronavirus crisis.
"This city has been knocked down so many times, and I said if that ever happens again... I swore I would do something about it in some manner shape or form." explained Patrick Pearce.
Pearce is talking about when NASA canceled the shuttle program. He had friends and neighbors in the space sector in Titusville who lost their jobs and homes.
Now the Pearces are worried about medical professionals and senior caregivers, so they are shipping out the masks and delivering them to area hospitals and nursing homes.
"I want the people of Titusville and Brevard County Florida and America...to do the same thing...find something that you can do," Pearce said.
The workspace and sewing machine are set up on the couple's dining room table and on the wall you'll find some inspiration for the work- a portrait of the Kennedy brothers, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Robert Francis Kennedy.
"'Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,'" Pearce said, recalling Kennedy's inauguration speech from January, 1961.
The Pearces are not charging for the masks. These are is all free, they said. To enable as many people as possible to have this layer of protection, they are sending out kits for people to sew their own or sew for others and then send back to them for distribution.
"This past week, I took our first hundred to the Hospice at St. Francis just down the road from us and then a batch to Parrish Medical Center," Pearce said. "They called us yesterday, said 'These are fantastic! Can you make more?' I said 'They’re on their way! They are in the pipeline!'"