Haynes Boone Partner Steve Epstein and his wife Susan worked closely with another couple in their community of Rye Brook, N.Y., to spearhead a local effort, collecting donations and providing hot meals, snacks and health and beauty items to nurses serving on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Epsteins teamed with their friends and neighbors, Debbie and Steve Handler, to organize the grassroots community drive, which raised more than $15,000 from nearly 200 donors. The Epsteins and Handlers had learned that about 50 nurses would be staying at the nearby Doral Arrowwood Hotel and Conference Center, which was closed to the public in early 2020. The nurses were being housed at Arrowwood in many cases to avoid potential COVID-19 exposure to their families. The closed facility had no working kitchen or dining facilities, and the original intent of the drive was to provide hot meals and donated toiletries to the nurses to make them more comfortable and less isolated during their stay.
The effort to help the nurses succeeded beyond the Epsteins and Handlers’ initial expectations by:
- Collecting and distributing six carloads of donated health and beauty products and snack items for the nurses;
- Using the donations to purchase more than 1,200 takeout meals delivered to Arrowwood that were served to the nurses over a 12-week period (this effort also supported multiple local area restaurants and catering companies that were closed for interior dining due to COVID-19);
- Sourcing and purchasing personal protective equipment (PPE) which was donated to Westchester Medical Center; and
- Arranging for a refrigerator and microwave to be donated by a local appliance dealer for the nurses to store and heat leftovers and snacks.
“During this difficult time, we saw so much generosity and goodwill,” Epstein said. “In addition to those who donated money and other items, volunteers baked amazing desserts and included individually written heartfelt notes. Children wrote ‘thank you’ notes and painted stones to show gratitude to the nurses, who responded with beautiful notes of gratitude and appreciation.”
In addition to donations to the Arrowwood drive, Haynes Boone lawyers and staff have contributed to a broader effort across the firm to help those impacted by the pandemic. Collectively, Haynes Boone raised substantial donations for Feeding America, a nonprofit organization with a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks that feed more than 46 million people through food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, and other community-based agencies. Individual offices also raised money for local food banks and donated meals to frontline workers.
Epstein is a partner in the Finance Practice Group in the firm’s New York office with a focus in commodity finance, corporate finance, structured finance, asset securitization and secondary market mortgage finance transactions.