Telegraph photo by DEAN SHALHOUP Nashua Rotary Club West member Lee Allison uses a "grab stick" to pass several masks to one of the hundreds of visitors who received thousands of masks during the weekend-long Mask Up NH! giveaway at Nashua High School South.

NASHUA – Among “Rotary moments,” the weekend giveaway of more than 12,000 masks to help thousands more Greater Nashuans ward off the COVID-19 virus is up near the top of the list.

“Rotary moments” illustrate “what Rotary is all about,” Nashua Rotary Club president Mike Aquino said. The event, which featured the appearance of the so-called “Maskmobile,” Aquino added, was “just the kind of service project” through which Rotarians “greatly benefit our communities.”

Dozens of members of Nashua Rotary, Nashua Rotary West and Souhegan Valley Rotary clubs not only showed up for shifts at the three-day giveaway, but had been preparing by unpacking boxes of masks, arranging them for transport to the site, making signs, laying out traffic patterns and putting together donation boxes for anyone who wished to help the club’s ongoing and future service projects.

The idea for the giveaway was launched by New Hampshire Rotarians Alex Ray, CEO of The Common Man restaurants, and Steve Rand, third-generation owner of the historic A.M. Rand Hardware store in downtown Plymouth.

They named the project Mask Up NH!, and back in April they got started by arranging for some 67,000 masks to be shipped from Honduras to New Hampshire.

When the shipment arrived in Miami, the two headed south to pick them up, and a 24-hour road trip later, the masks were in the Granite State awaiting distribution at various sites.

The debut giveaway took place in Plymouth, followed by events in Greater Manchester, the Salem area, and last weekend’s in Nashua.

Aquino, meanwhile, sized up the local distribution as attaining its goal of “filling a tremendous demand … by giving out 12,000 free masks over the three days.”

Bill Barry, Nashua Rotary’s president elect, noted that his club was founded “in the aftermath of the Spanish Flu epidemic” of 1918-19.

“Today, we are fighting this disease (COVID-19 virus) by distributing free masks, just as vigorously as our founding Rotarians built our community in the aftermath of that pandemic,” Barry said.

Residents throughout the region who weren’t able to make it to any giveaways as yet are urged to keep an eye out for future events, which can be found at www.maskupnh.com.

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.