A San Diego man is on a journey to rediscover his late father’s lost artwork and, in the process, uncover a glimpse of Hawaiʻi’s military history during the 1940s and ’50s.
Nestor Vallar is the son of Vitaliano Vallar, a U.S. Navy cook who was handpicked by his superiors to paint lifelike oil portraits for some of the military’s top brass.
Vitaliano Vallar was stationed in Hawaiʻi from 1947 to 1949 and then again in the ’50s. He died in 2005, and now Nestor Vallar is on a mission to locate his works and unearth his father’s artistic legacy.
“He was self-taught,” Nestor Vallar said about his father. “His captain, Capt. John Holbrook, realized that he had this gift… He took him out of cooking off-and-on to paint these really important admirals.”…