BREMERTON -- Coronavirus halted Wendy Wreyford's cubicle curtain project.

The 39-year-old office administrator, in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard's ocean engineering department, had procured an abundance of forest green fabric in an office sometimes called a "fish bowl."

But as the pandemic has spread this spring, she quickly realized she needed that fabric to cover something else: people's faces.

"So I brought my sewing machine to work," said Wreyford, answering Shipyard Commander Dianna Wolfson's call to make cloth masks with her weapon of choice: a 1974 Swiss-made Elma, a gift from her grandmother.

Wreyford has joined the hundreds of other workers at the shipyard who have pivoted from the shipyard's traditional work -- maintaining the Navy's fleets of nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers -- to the mission of protecting the workforce doing that work during a pandemic.

The shipyard is using both its industrial hardware along with a small army of sewers to make the cloth masks to ensure each of its more than 14,000 workers -- among the largest single workforces in the state -- can take home three masks for use each day on the job.

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On Thursday, the shipyard passed the 50,000 mark, a point of pride for the employees and managers involved with a process just weeks old.

"In times like this, you really see the true character in people, said Don Flowers, nuclear manager of Shop 64, which includes the sail loft where masks were mass-produced.

'I'm doing what I can'

Wreyford remembers listening to her grandparents talk about the war efforts of World War II -- of coming together to fight a common enemy.

"This is a similar situation," she said. "And wearing a mask is my way to protect people. So I’m doing what I can to prevent the spread of the virus."

She lugged her steel-encased sewing machine to her desk, where she makes those forest green masks on her lunch break. But she didn't stop there, wanting to join a bigger effort within what is referred to as the shipyard's sail loft.

Each afternoon and on the weekends, Wreyford also heads to Building 460, the 1941-built behemoth building that states outwardly "Building on a Proud Tradition" to the outside world.

On its third floor, or "sail loft," an assembly line of up to two dozen people has been working 24 hours a day. Normally, the loft's Grade A linen would be used in projects that provide protections from nuclear radiation. Now, its computer-controlled fabric cutter is busily cranking out the shape of face masks before seams are sewed.

"It’s a hustle and bustle where there’s a lot of energy," Wreyford said. "At a time when things feel daunting, the sail loft is vibrant and bustling."

It's not the only shop helping on the project. The sheet metal work crews have been using a laser cutter to manufacture thousands of bendable aluminum nose pieces.

"Everyone’s going their hardest at it," said Dakota King a nuclear training supervisor in the sail loft's shop, "because they know how important it is in the community."

Shipyard workers are required to wear cloth masks where they cannot stay more than six feet from a colleague. Wreyford said she can see the differences in different masks, including colors used, as the process have evolved.

"It’s fun to walk around and see people wearing them, see how we’ve progressed through this," she said.

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'There's a huge sense of pride'

To maximize production, the shipyard also turned to those, like Wreyford, with their own sewing machines and materials. The request was welcomed by Corrine Beach, a STEM education coordinator at the shipyard who has been taking leave to make masks for area emergency responders since early March.

The need to protect such responders hits close to home for Beach, whose husband, Travis, is a Poulsbo firefighter.

And now that one-time hobby, which became a calling, has become her job.

Each day, Beach convenes more than 150 people at a local parking lot to distribute quilter fabric to the sewers and pick up their finished product. After some QA, including being laundered, they're packaged and handed out to the workforce.

It's hard to imagine someone better for the job, said Kimberly Rittenhouse, deputy executive director of the shipyard and its support staff division manager.

"She's an exceptionally organized manager," Rittenhouse said. "And she’s got a heart for service."

Beach's group is closing in on 10,000 made.

"To give back in a quantitative kind of way, there’s a huge sense of pride," said Beach, who came to the shipyard in 2001 as a nuclear engineer.

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