SHERIDAN -- There are aircraft covers for everything from Cessna 150s to sophisticated fighter jets in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is a supertough, mouse-proof fabric for covering wellheads in oil and natural gas fields.

And there are doors that collapse if suicidal sailors and soldiers try to hang themselves.

There's also a printing company that uses Earth-friendly processes. And lightweight interior armor capable of stopping bullets for Sikorsky helicopters.

That list only partially describes the hundreds of items designed and manufactured by Kennon Products Inc., which includes Kennon Covers and Bella Graphics & Display, based in Sheridan.

"Kennon is always solving problems for people," said marketing director Mark Weitz.

In mid-June, Weitz and owner Ron Kensey flew to Washington, D.C., to meet with high-level military and defense contractors interested in the lightweight armor.

"We got very encouraging feedback," Weitz said, adding that several patents are pending on the armor, which should be field-ready this year.

Wyoming or bust

Ron Kensey and a partner, Paul Kennon Chaney, started Kennon in Los Angeles in 1984. Kensey quickly bought out his partner and started dreaming of leaving his executive-level, 17-year career with the American Heart Association to focus on making aircraft sun shields and covers.

"My dream was to move to spacious Wyoming in a bus and raise a family and live happily ever after," Kensey said.

Kensey had a garage business where he personally custom-fit patterns to airplanes, cut the fabric on the floor and sewed the covers on a lone machine.

But just before moving to Wyoming in 1989, Kensey's covers were briefly criticized in Aviation Consumer magazine for scratching some windshields. Dreams started becoming painful memories. With two kids in elementary school and Kennon his only source of income, Kensey quickly solved the problem by lining his covers. Then he painstakingly telephoned or wrote letters to all 3,500 customers explaining the potential scratching problem and offering a refund, a new windshield or an upgrade to a lined cover at half-price.

All but 10 percent of his customers bought the improved cover and many said they were impressed by his products and his honesty. Over several years, Kensey improved his company's reputation for precision and quality and by the early 1990s he had restored his cash flow.

Two decades ago, Kensey employed two people, plus himself. Now Kennon and the graphics company have a staff of 27 producing gross sales of $2 million per year in a professional, but informal, work atmosphere.

"Sometimes we've gotten our best opportunities to make loyal customers by making mistakes and correcting them," he said.

Stopping bullets

Kelly Brennan, a Ph.D.-level engineer from the University of Wyoming, has spent several years developing lightweight internal armor to protect military helicopters and their crews.

But, designing computer models to find material mixes that will stop bullets is next to impossible, Kensey said. So, the engineer designs a product and a college student builds it. The honeycombs are filled with white plugs of proprietary material and the whole panel is wrapped in duct tape. Making these low-tech prototypes attractive will come later.

Brennan is working with a combination of materials that will capture and flatten out bullets before they can harm the aircraft or airmen.

"We've been building prototypes and shooting them with AK-47 bullets," Kensey said. "That's what these guys shoot at our helicopters."

The research is funded through the U.S. Small Business Innovation Research Program in conjunction with the Army Research Laboratory near Annapolis, Md., and Auburn University in Auburn, Ala.

"We're motivated to stop a bullet and save a life," Weitz said. "We know we've got something. You hope it catches on."

Three consultants sit in a conference room adorned with giant photos of the NASA space shuttle piggybacking a ride on a Boeing 747 flying over Edwards Air Force Base in California. A Boeing Osprey V-22 photo hangs on the opposite wall.

Beneath aviation's state-of-the-art toys, the trio sits talking and cranking on their laptops.

"They're trying to figure out how to wrap a [Boeing] 737," Weitz said.

Kennon has designed and fitted covers for almost every aircraft. Now the company is building a fabric bib to catch wastewater, including heavy metals, when jet engines are washed. The fabric is portable and light, unlike the large metal tubs used to capture the wastewater now.

When the serious decisions are over, Kensey is an actor, including playing Vaudeville roles and wearing a white tux to play the master of ceremonies in the musical Chicago at Sheridan's WYO Theater. He's also got Weitz interested in acting, too.

Of mice and oil

Sometimes projects just appear.

Kennon was asked to develop a tougher fabric that mice couldn't chew through to cover wellheads in Wyoming's coal-bed methane industry and the tar sands of northern Canada.

"They have some extreme problems with mice up there. They'll go up to a wellhead and have a hundred mice jump out," Kensey said. "It's nasty."

And if mice chew through the covers, the snakes follow. Mice can carry hantavirus, a respiratory disease that affects humans and can be fatal.

Bella Graphics, which uses green printing technologies, has been busy making fabric signs proclaiming projects paid for by the federal stimulus money. Unlike World War II, aviators can't paint personalized logos on their planes anymore. So, Bella prints out logos that can be displayed on the Kennon covers. Bella's $80,000 printer was printing a "Dressed to kill" logo for The 310th Fighter Squadron.

"Because it's been cured in UV intense light, it can go out in the sunlight and not fade," Weitz said

Kennon uses the mottos, "Safer covers built to last" and "Protecting High Value Assets."

But the company does turn down projects, such as a recent request to make covers for outdoor barbecues, to focus energy on the fabric bib.

"Is a barbecue a valuable asset? No. Is the groundwater? Yes," Weitz said.

Mending war's minds

Perhaps the saddest design Kennon is manufacturing was developed by two Sheridan women, Jackie Van Mark and Lisa Garstad. The women noticed a need to help suicidal members of the military at the psychiatric ward at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Sheridan. They designed a Soft Suicide Prevention Door, patented their idea and turned to Kennon to make it.

Wounded Special Operations Forces like Navy SEALS or Army Rangers may be treated at the Palo Alto Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center in California. Kennon and the women are developing an even tougher, collapsible door for these troops.

"They know how to kill better than anybody, including themselves," Weitz said. "The No. 1 problem the V.A. has had since the wars started are suicides and the No. 1 method is hanging off doors."

Hospitals across the country are expressing interest in the award-winning door, he said.

To give the emotionally traumatized warriors something to take their mind off suicide, Kennon decorates the doors with beautiful mountain scenes that could have come right out of the Big Horn Mountains.