By TOM MARINER //
You’re three-and-a-half miles up in the sky, carrying three-dozen soldiers in a Boeing CH-47 Chinook – the fastest helicopter in the U.S. fleet – at 200 mph.
Or you’re 10 miles up in a McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet, cruising at a peppy 1,305 mph.
This is when you really want to trust the people who built your ship – especially the professional engineers and manufacturers who labored to ensure pilots and passengers can walk away from “hard landings.”
You likely will if your seat or emergency oxygen system was designed and manufactured by East/West Industries, owned and managed in Ronkonkoma by the second-generation sibling squad of Teresa Ferraro and Joe Spinosa.
Embracing the tagline “Saving Aircrew Lives,” Teresa and Joe took over from their parents, Dom and Mary Spinosa, who started the aerospace firm in 1968. East/West initially made valves and connectors – still part of the product line today – but has evolved to produce a cutting-edge array of crash-absorbing seats and other gear focused primarily on saving lives.
Tom Mariner: East/West always moved in the right direction.
Spinosa, now the vice president of business development, recalls his father at the family dining room table 50 years ago, designing small oxygen-system components.
“We’ve grown to a team of more than 80 talented design engineers, management and support personnel that we’re proud to call family,” the second-gen VP noted.
Neither sibling earned an engineering degree, though both were quick studies, learning technical innovation from their father and spending summer vacations in the family factory. And joining the firm straight out of college – Teresa studied business at Adelphi University, Joe studied economics and psychology at Fordham University – both proved to be instinctive managers.
Like any good manager, they spread around the credit for East/West’s enduring success, deferring to the folks in the Engineer Department or working the production line.
“It’s thrilling to see the excitement of our team when a colonel or master segreant comes to the plant to personally thank those who built the gear that saved their lives,” Ferraro noted.
Also recognizing East/West’s work are its corporate clients – the Ronkonkoma company regularly receives Boeing’s coveted (and rare) Gold Performance Achievement Award – and professionals throughout Long Island’s regional aerospace community. Ferraro, for instance, was awarded the Leroy R. Grumman Award (honoring aerospace innovation) in 2018 by Garden City’s Cradle of Aviation Museum.
Back in 2015, when the firm was still located in its longtime headquarters on 13th Avenue in Ronkonkoma, East/West’s owners spotted a vacant building in front of Long Island MacArthur Airport, bigger and better and just three miles away.
After decades of growth, a move was imperative. East/West had been courted by industrial-development agencies in Georgia and Florida, but Long Island was its home.
“The talents of our employees and our suppliers here, with the help of [Town of Islip Supervisor] Angie Carpenter and the Islip Industrial Development Agency, made the choice easier,” Ferraro noted.
The 2017 move would expand the company’s footprint to 48,000 square feet and supersize its workforce, exceeding plans for a 40-percent increase.
The kids are all right: President Teresa Ferraro (right) and Vice President Joe Spinosa have taken East/West Industries to new heights since taking over from their patents.
Turns out, that space was vacated by a firm I helped manage, Quantum Medical Imaging. We shared the building with innovative companies Qosina and ELM Global Logistics, and I used to keep a sledgehammer on my desk, determined to one day break through the cinderblocks and take over some of those other spaces as QMI grew.
Ultimately, East/West swung that hammer. In 2021, again with the Islip IDA’s help, the company expanded again, adding another 27,000 square feet – essentially tripling its production area and doubling its administration and engineering spaces.
Thirty-plus patents, numerous additive-manufacturing forays and a slew of advanced and proprietary design and manufacturing software later, East/West Industries and its second-generation leadership stand as a testament to Long Island’s glorious aerospace past.
And to its brightest future, where talent, family and enthusiasm can help any innovation grow out of a good idea at the dining room table.
Tom Mariner is the executive director of Bayport-based Long Island Bio.
