Gallery, research center opens at CAF

MIDLAND INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT There’s a story behind each of Roy Grinnell’s paintings, which were unveiled as the L.P. Nolen Research Center opened Saturday afternoon inside the Commemorative Air Force Airpower Museum.

One of Grinnell’s paintings titled “Sandy’s Change of Plans” showed an American fighter plane flying over a German-occupied World War II-era Château-Thierry in France, under heavy fire while attacking a railroad line. Its pilot looked out to the side as bullets tore holes in the plane’s tail fin and the oxygen tank right behind the fuselage.

Roy Grinnell said he talked extensively with the pilot he painted on that canvas. Grinnell said he even went to France with pilot Col. Virgil “Sandy” Sansing and visited the home of a then-French Underground member who hid Sansing after he parachuted out of his shot-down plane so he could piece together this snapshot of the war. And apparently, the locals there remembered Sansing very well during that visit. The homeowner’s daughter made a graduation dress out of Sansing’s parachute and met him there during their visit, and another man came up to Sansing and Grinnell with something Sansing never expected to see again.

“Some guy showed up with his helmet,” Grinnell said. The man asked for Sansing’s autograph, which he gave despite Grinnell’s objections that it would ruin its historical value.

The paintings though are part of the historical experience at the museum, CAF spokeswoman Jennifer Borlinghaus said.

“To see the painting, it’s like you’re there. It’s like a still shot of that mission,” Borlinghaus said.

Borlinghaus said the $100,000-plus research center will have about 8,000 World War II-era periodicals, technical manuals, books and other publications, some of which were previously only in the museum’s archives and were only accessible by appointment. The museum’s staff is also digitalizing its archived oral histories and films for the research center.

Grimmell’s wife Irene wiped away a few tears before the ribbon-cutting as her husband accepted honors from the museum for the paintings. She later said it was “thrilling” to see her husband’s work at the CAF and hoped it would honor the World War II veterans.

“This is a labor of love for us,” she said.