Courtesy New England Patriots

In his daily press conferences in March, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker had been growing increasingly frustrated by the state’s shortage of N95 respiratory masks that help protect health care workers who are on the frontlines of the current crisis. The problem worsened on March 18, when an order of 3 million masks that the state had negotiated to buy were impounded by the federal government in the Port of New York and New Jersey, Baker said in an interview with the Boston Globe. At that point, he said he started reaching out to “anybody and everybody” he knew, in search of an alternative.

The governor ultimately identified someone who could help get the masks produced in China and navigate the other on-the-ground tangles. “‘The question then became: how do you actually make the pickup work,’ Baker said, noting it would probably be impossible with traditional commercial air transport.”

Which is eventually how, on April 2, a plane owned by the New England Patriots flew from China to Logan International Airport, carrying more than a million N95 respirator masks that the Baker administration arranged to buy from suppliers in China. Baker credits Chinese officials, members of his own administration, and the owner and president of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft (MBA 1965) and Jonathan Kraft (MBA 1990), for the successful collaboration across public and private sectors.

“It is an honor for our family to be a part of this humanitarian mission. We knew that purchasing greatly-needed N95 masks and providing the Patriots plane to expedite their delivery to local hospitals would immediately help protect our courageous health care professionals,” Robert Kraft said in a statement.

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