PDA

View Full Version : Portrait of a hero -- and of family history



thedrifter
12-17-06, 10:02 AM
Posted on Sun, Dec. 17, 2006

WORLD WAR II
Portrait of a hero -- and of family history
Portraits of WWII servicemen, found in a downtown jewelry shop, are bringing memories of loved ones long lost to their relatives.
BY FRED TASKER
ftasker@MiamiHerald.com

Theda Rendon, 67, of Homestead, picked up The Miami Herald on Nov. 10 and saw the front-page story about the discovery of long-lost portraits painted in 1945 of Miami servicemen who died in World War II and the attempts now to unite those portraits with the men's surviving relatives.

Perusing the list of names, she got to the third-from-last before spotting the name Norris Walker.

''That's my half-brother,'' she said. ``I got so excited I got goosebumps.''

With help from her computer-savvy daughter, Zinida, she sent an e-mail to Vinson Richter, the South Miami developer who had come across the portraits and was trying to track down relatives.

The two met halfway, in the parking lot of Christ Fellowship Church in Perrine, and Richter gave her the painting.

''It was beautiful. It's amazing how good it looked after all these years,'' she said.

''She was really sweet,'' Richter said. ``When I talked to her on the phone, they were so excited I could hear screaming in the background.''

The portraits, 42 in all, had been forgotten in the storeroom of a downtown Miami jewelry shop since at least 1965.

When Richter came across them, he and his family started trying to trace them. After some initial success, they hit a dead end and asked The Miami Herald to help. The paper printed some pictures and a list of the names, and put images of all 42 portraits on MiamiHerald.com.

The story helped find five more relatives, meaning Richter now has reunited 21 of the portraits with relatives.

Norris Walker grew up in Homestead, his half-sister remembered, graduating from Redland High School and joining the U.S. Marines. He was wounded twice in the Pacific before being killed at 20 in the invasion of Iwo Jima.

''He didn't even make it to the shore,'' Rendon said.

Walker was buried in Hawaii at the ''Punchbowl,'' officially called the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, with more than 25,000 other service personnel, many killed in the Pacific during World War II. The famous war correspondent Ernie Pyle is buried there.

''My daughter, Cophia, was there once and took a picture of his grave marker for me,'' Rendon said.

She plans to have the portrait restored and give it to Norris' full brother, Lee Walker, of Atlanta.

Among the other portraits given to relatives:

• Edward Rosenbaum, to his niece in Fort Pierce.

• Aubrey Lewis, to his nephew and namesake, Aubrey Fisher, and Fisher's two brothers. Lewis had been a firefighter before joining the military, Richter learned; his three nephews followed in his footsteps, serving careers in firefighting before retiring and moving out of Florida.

• Quentin Welbaum, to his first cousin, Rome Earl Welbaum, an attorney who lives just down Old Cutler Road from Richter.

In his research, Richter concluded that several of the servicemen in the portraits had no surviving relatives. He's considering donating them to several local museums; he'll decide by January.

``We wanted to get out all the portraits by Christmas. They made nice Christmas presents.''

Ellie