Raleigh sailor uses parachute maintenance skills to sew masks for others in the Navy

A Raleigh sailor is putting his experience in Navy aircrew survival – including maintaining and repairing parachutes, flight clothing and search and rescue equipment – to use in a new life-saving mission: Sewing fabric face coverings to protect against COVID-19.

Aircrew Survival Equipmentman Devonta Drum, assigned to the USS John C. Stennis, is part of the first team to sew face coverings for fellow sailors, while also preserving medical masks for health care professionals.

On April 5, the Navy mandated that all sailors should wear cloth face coverings to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, especially in cramped housing quarters or while on aircraft carriers. However, sailors still needed to prioritize saving medical-quality masks for first responders and hospital workers.

In response, Capt. Kimberly Toone, who has a background in medicine, developed the idea to have sailors produce high-quality, fabric face coverings for their fellow sailors by using equipment they already had on board the ship.

Part of Drum's primary duties already included using sewing machines and equipment, so this was a natural next step.

"This is actually what I signed up for, and I'm honored to be in this position to help out my fellow brothers in arms," said Drum.

Toone said that because of the work of Drum's team, they've developed cleaner, more efficient processes for creating facial coverings.

Drum's ship, the Stennis, was outputting 30 coverings per day as of April 10, with an expected increase to nearly 50 a day by next week.

"The sailors have created an assembly line; while several sew, others are cutting fabric and putting the pieces and parts together to aid in creating the fabric face coverings as quickly as possible," said officials in a press release.

Ships on deployment who don't have access to protective facial coverings have been able to create their own coverings using items they already have on board.

Likewise, facial coverings can be sent out to squadrons who may not have access to that fabric.

"This is what we do as the Navy in general. We protect and serve our country; this is part of our job no matter what," said Drum.