The Frenchtown Rural Fire District was the recipient of 30 specially made face shields delivered personally to Missoula by the owners and staff at Bridger Aerospace in Bozeman on Wednesday afternoon.

Communications Director for Bridger Aerospace, K. Mita explained the history of how his company decided to produce some sorely needed personal protective equipment for first responders.

“Our CEO Tim Sheehy is a former Navy SEAL and an all-around big hearted guy, and he was concerned from the very beginning about the effects that COVID 19 could have on our healthcare workers and first responders, said Mita. “He was already teamed up with Bozeman Health to figure out how we could use our technology and expertise to develop a prototype of some face shields.”

Mita said that Frenchtown Fire's Mel Holtz spotted one of his Bridge Aerospace Facebook posts about the new face shields and picked up the phone.

“As it turned out, Mel Holtz from the Frenchtown Fire District saw one of my posts on Facebook and reached out to see if they could get on a waiting list for some face shields,” he said. “I responded right away and said we’d love to help you out. I got a hold of time to see where we were with production of our equipment for the hospital.”

Mita said Sheehy proved yet again what a big hearted boss he was by making the Frenchtown Fire District request a priority.

“He’s just the kind of guy that can’t say no to any type of request where there’s a need, so he just said do whatever you need to make it happen, because I want to help these guys out,” he said. “I was able to pull out 20 face shields and 10 extra to share with a local hospital or what have you.”

At about 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday the Bridge Aerospace aircraft touched down at the Missoula International Airport and the face shields were personally delivered by Ed Sheehy to the Frenchtown Fire District.

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