Courtesy Photo The owner of Cadillac Products, with a plant in Rogers City, models one of the medical gowns made by the company as it takes part in the war against the coronavirus.

ROGERS CITY — For the second time in its 80-year history, a Rogers City manufacturing plant is part of a war effort.

As Big 3 automobile manufacturers return to work today, allowed by an order on Thursday by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to return to the work that has stalled since they were asked to send employees home on March 18, Cadillac Products, which has a plant on U.S. 23 south of Rogers City, will continue its regular business of making car parts.

Not, however, without taking a shift as one of the unlikely suppliers of personal protective equipment needed by frontline workers battling the coronavirus.

No new positive test results or deaths were reported over the weekend for Northeast Michigan residents as the region takes precautions to avoid spreading the virus that is causing a widespread shortage of personal protective equipment such as masks, face shields, and medical gowns for frontline workers.

Inspired by the daughter of the Cadillac Products’ owner, who worried one Friday that she’d soon be wearing garbage bags to work at her Detroit hospital because gowns were in such short supply, the manufacturer with several plants around the state was up and running by the following Sunday, in a new line of business — making medical gowns.

News that the automotive plastic parts maker had gotten into the PPE business garnered requests for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of the gowns, according to Andy Shore, the company’s corporate quality director and Grand Lake-area resident.

The gowns are not made at the Rogers City plant, Shore said, but that facility provided some of the equipment needed to finish them, with gowns shipped north by the generosity of a local trucking company that donated its assistance.

Workers at the Rogers City plant developed a heat-sealing method used to quickly fuse the gowns’ sleeves.

Thousands of the gowns have been donated to Cheboygan, Presque Isle, Alpena, and Montmorency counties, to be distributed by area emergency managers, Shore said.

Testing sites like that in Atlanta and senior homes like MediLodge of Alpena have been gown recipients, as well.

The company has its roots in another effort to keep the country safe. During World War II, a Mr. M. P. Williams, then a bookbinder in Cadillac, heard the military was trying to figure out how to protect the artillery aboard its ships, which were rusting from water exposure during trips across the ocean to Europe.

Using his binding skills, Williams stitched together a large plastic bag and presented it to the military, eventually winning a government contract with no company and no employees — and, from there, Cadillac Products was born.

At the Rogers City plant, workers now create water shields, the lining under a door’s trim that keeps the inside of a vehicle dry, Shore explained.

The property was, decades ago, owned by Mr. Lay, of Lay’s Potato Chips fame, who bought product from potato farmers from Posen and the surrounding area.

Williams, who used to hunt in the region, purchased the plant from Lay. Now, the fourth-generation owners of the Cadillac Products facility go ice fishing on the pond behind the plant that donated its equipment and ingenuity so that doctors and nurses can be protected as they care for people battling COVID-19.

“It’s pretty amazing what American companies can do,” said Shore. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll be talking to you two years from now about how great our gown manufacturing products are.”