Group looking for missing portrait of WWII nurse
SAN BENITO, TX -- A South Texas group wants to track down the painting of a World War II nurse that once hung in the lobby of the now-defunct hospital named after her.
The Valley Morning Star in Harlingen reports the Dolly Vinsant Memorial Foundation is offering a $1,000 reward to whoever locates the portrait of Wilma "Dolly" Vinsant Shea, a San Benito native who served as a U.S. Army Air Forces flight nurse.
She was killed in 1945 at age 28 when her evacuation airplane carrying wounded American soldiers was shot down over Germany.
Her portrait was once the focal point of the lobby at the Dolly Vinsant Memorial Hospital, which opened in 1949. It changed hands numerous times beginning in the 1990s and stopped functioning as a hospital in 2007.
