How a Hennessey man helped bring a remarkable tribute to life
Sometimes the best stories begin with a simple phone call. For Hennessey resident Kim Hobbs that call eventually led to a massive painting honoring the men who flew B-24 bombers during World War II.
The story begins with Kim’s father, Charles Hobbs, who served with the 376th Bombardment Group during the war. Over the years, Kim became deeply involved in preserving the history of the group and organizing reunions for the surviving veterans and their families.
While tracking down crew members and their descendants, Kim contacted Janet Hoffman, the daughter of one of his father’s fellow crewmen. Her father had returned from the war a troubled man, struggling with alcoholism and the emotional scars of combat.
Kim wanted Janet to attend a reunion and hear something she may never have known: the stories of the brave and respected crewman her father had been during the war.
He even offered to pay her way.
Janet accepted, bringing along her husband, Larry Hoffman, a professional landscape artist from Minnesota.
What happened next was something nobody expected.
Larry had a lifelong love of airplanes, but he had never experienced anything quite like these reunions. He and Janet quickly became close friends with the veterans and their families.
After attending several gatherings, Larry decided he wanted to give something back.
He began planning an enormous painting of a B-24 Liberator bomber, the aircraft these men had flown into combat.
His inspiration came from an old photograph taken by a crew chief who happened to have a camera when a B-24 roared past him at low altitude. The aircraft was the famous Strawberry Bitch, returning from a mission.
Larry borrowed the original negative and used it as the basis for his painting. However, he deliberately removed the aircraft’s identifying markings.
He didn’t want the painting to represent just one airplane.
He wanted it to represent every crewman’s airplane.
Working in his Minneapolis studio, Larry created the enormous painting on a single canvas, large enough to nearly fill his studio wall.
The masterpiece was unveiled at a 376th Bomb Group reunion in Seattle, believed to have been in 2008.
Kim remembers the moment vividly.
The painting was suspended high above the crowd, concealed behind a white sheet. Larry stood on one side, Kim on the other, as hundreds of veterans and their wives gathered below.
When they lowered the sheet, the reaction was immediate.
“You could just hear, WOW!” Kim recalled.
But what really made the moment special was hearing veterans looking up and saying, “That’s my plane!”
The original painting eventually went to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. A single, full-size reproduction was made and continued traveling to reunions.
Today, that reproduction has found a permanent home at the veteran’s museum inside Enid’s Oakwood Mall.
It hangs prominently above the museum entrance, greeting visitors as they walk in.
For Larry, the painting was simply an act of appreciation for men he had come to admire.
For Kim, it represents years of dedication to preserving the memories of his father’s generation.
And for the veterans who stood beneath it, the painting brought back something no photograph or history book could fully capture.
It was their airplane. Their memories. Their story. By AAH Jack Quirk
About The Author
